Cheung Tin-chi (Max Zhang) was the new Grandmaster of Wing Chun until he challenged and got his ass beat by Ip Man (Donnie Yen) behind closed doors. Humiliated, Cheung sold out as a gangster for hire for awhile, then gave up crime to open a grocery store. He runs afoul of local tough guy Tso Sai-Kit (Kevin Cheng) on a delivery when he accidentally interrupts Tso's harassment of Julia (Liu Yan) and Nana (Chrissie Chau). Tso firebombs the grocery store in retaliation. Julia gets Cheung a job at her brother's bar, and Tso starts selling heroin because he's mad at his sister (Michelle Yeoh).
This is not a great movie. The plot is a pastiche of like 6 other, better films. But it is a very good martial arts wire fu movie. The legendary action choreographer Cory Yuen Woo-Ping directed it and every fight scene is great. You just kind of have to slog along in between them while it tries to plot at you. It does feature a surprisingly good performance from Dave Bautista, like way better than his cardboard cutout character deserved. He totally could have phoned that in but didn't. And his fight with Max Zhang is hilarious because of their size differences. It reminded me of Kate Bishop going up against Kingpin in the Hawkeye series.
I started trying to watch this on the Roku Channel but the ad breaks were super annoying. Then it was on Netflix but my subtitles were messed up. And I finally finished it on Hulu. A journey was taken. Just watch it on Hulu.
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