Donnie Yen's crowning achievement? Very possibly. I've always thought Donnie was the paragon of martial artistry on film... I've also admired how he remains relatively true to the style of the hero in question, if that is relevant (See Iron Monkey, for example.). The story of Ip Man is similar to that of Jet Li's "Fearless", but to be honest, Ip Man the movie is better.
The action scenes are works of art. Donnie portrays Wing Chun with a good degree of authenticity to the style (considering, of course, the unavoidable dramatic, cinematic flair). Donnie's technique is crisp, rapid, accurate, potent. The choreography is splendid. There is no significant wire work here, just economical, brutally efficient combat-- which is what Wing Chun is about. Truly homage to the spirit of Wing Chun. As a practitioner of Wing Chun, I can truly point to this movie, show it to my friends who don't know, and say: "That's Wing Chun, that's what it's about."
The story of Ip Man works well with Donnie's acting style. Ip Man is a martial artist conflicted in his priorities-- reluctant to teach, fascinated with the art, struggling to balance family responsibilities with that of friends and comrades who get in trouble. Forced by the Japanese occupation, near destitute, to feed his family and defend the honor of his friends, he finally fights and teaches to defend the honor of China, as well as uphold the spirit of kung fu.
I was a little nervous watching this film-- someone has posted virtually all the fight scenes on YouTube. I was afraid that after seeing them, that this film would be a disappointment. I had already seen the fight scenes... and kung fu flicks aren't exactly award-winning drama. But Ip Man didn't disappoint. The story was still compelling, interesting. The fight scenes in context were more delicious than on YouTube (and the large widescreen, framerate and resolution upgrades didn't hurt!) Donnie shows appropriate remorse, conflict, passion, and resolve. It is understated-- like Donnie really tried to be true to the historical Ip Man. It works well, and shows me that Donnie has really matured as an actor. Hey, I know Donnie is never going to win an Oscar for his acting.. but you know what? He really shows some maturity as a professional here.
This double disc edition is nice. Lots of special features-- deleted scenes, interviews, production trailers, photo galleries. I got it based on other reviews that the single disc version had dubbing issues. I watched the Cantonese version (options for Mandarin also on this disc) with English subtitles... and if it was dubbed, I couldn't tell. I don't speak Chinese, so can't tell you how accurate it was, but it sounded fairly authentic, and I hear enough Chinese to be able to say that much, at least. The subtitles had one or two spelling errors, but minimal grammatical problems. It seemed fairly true to the story's intent, was easy to follow, and kept me interested.
I'm biased. I'm a Wing Chun practitioner and a Donnie Yen fan-- but I must say this has superseded "Hero" as my favorite kung fu flick. It's at least in the same class as Jackie Chan's "Drunken Master" for unique, superlative martial arts. The story and acting are good-- and while the storyline is a variation on a cliched theme for kung fu flicks, this one is well done. If you enjoyed "Fearless" (I would rate it three stars)-- you'll like Ip Man so much better, I think. If you practice Wing Chun (2 million worldwide!)-- you have to own this movie. If you like Donnie Yen-- this might be his masterpiece.
Addendum: In deference to W. Kim's excellent review above, I took the liberty of renting and watching both movies "Warriors Two" and "Prodigal Son" as other movies that accurately depict Wing Chun as a martial art. Both movies are your stereotypical Hong King B-movie "Wuxi" style soap opera kung fu flick. Warriors Two is better storywise-- Prodigal Son, at least via the subtitles, didn't make sense much of the time. Ah, but the reason why we watch such movies: "Prodigal Son" was the more accurate Wing Chun movie. It depicts Wing Chun through the "Wuxi" B-movie filter, but has a lot of fairly sound representation given this understanding. Prodigal Son was Wing Chun with lots of non-Wing Chun thrown in, or Wing Chun in a deep cat stance, or with some Longfist twist and things like that. Just flashy show. All in all, neither depicts Wing Chun as "Ip Man" does-- Ip Man is not stylized, although it, of course, depicts Wing Chun in an idealized way-- that is, the ultimate master of Wing Chun does every technique perfect and has every technique work perfectly. But "Ip Man" is the only movie I have (still) seen that I can point to as "authentic" Wing Chun.