Summaries

Synopsis

In 1964, following the death of his wife, Ip Man (Donnie Yen) (an unassuming Chinese Wing Chun master originally from Foshan) discovers he has throat cancer due to smoking. The doctor asks Ip to stop smoking and to consider Chemotherapy as the cancer is malignant and is spreading rapidly.

After his rebellious son Ip Ching (Jim Liu) fights back against a bully and is expelled from school, Ip decides to travel to San Francisco upon the invitation of his former student Bruce Lee & to look for a new school for his son at the same time. Bruce Lee had sent his student Billy (Simon Shiyamba) to Hong Kong to invite Ip for a Karate tournament in San Francisco, as an honored guest.

Ip promises to call at 10 PM HK time each day, but Ching is livid with Ip and says that he need not call. Ching says he won't go to America and that he does not like studying. Ching wants to teach martial arts.After Ching and his father get into a heated argument that ends with the older Ip striking his son in the face, he entrusts Ching to his friend, Fat Bo (Kent Cheng).

His student, Bruce Lee (Danny Chan), has upset the local martial arts community in San Francisco by opening a Wing Chun school, teaching the Americans martial arts and writing an English language book on martial arts.Ip discovers from his reporter friend Liang Gen (Ngo Ka-Nin) that, because he is a foreigner, that a referral letter from the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association is needed to enroll Ching into an American school. The president of the association has asked to meet Ip first before approving the request for the letter.

Wan (Wu Yue) (Master of Tai Chi), the president of the Association, refuses to write the letter as Ip does not agree with the other grand masters' opinions on Bruce Lee's actions. Wan wants Bruce to stop accepting non Chinese students into his Dojo and also to withdraw his English book on martial arts from publication. The other grand masters consider Bruce Lee to be arrogant and not a spokesperson for Chinese Kung Fu. Bruce Lee is also attending the Karate tournament to challenge the other grand masters. Ip says that Bruce wants a wider following for Chinese Kung Fu and finds nothing wrong with that.After a brief fight with Wan where they test each other's Kung Fu, he leaves.

While leaving the school after a meeting with the principal (the principal refuses to admit Ching without the letter of recommendation), Ip chances upon the daughter of Wan, Yonah (Vanda Margraf), being bullied by a rival cheerleader, Becky (Grace Englert), and her male friends. Ip saves her and escorts her home, with Becky accidentally cutting herself with a pair of scissors.

Ip tells Wan that Yonah was not wrong to defend herself, but Wan rebukes him by claiming that Ip, as a foreigner, cannot understand the tension between whites and Chinese in America. Just before Ip leaves, Wan accuses him of using his daughter to get the letter and challenges him to a fight for it.

The fight is disrupted by an earthquake, and Wan tells Ip they will finish their fight at the upcoming Mid Autumn Festival. Ip refuses, explaining that he merely escorted his daughter home for her safety and leaves.

Meanwhile, Becky lies to her parents, claiming that Yonah attacked her. Her father Andrew Walters (Andrew Lane), who is an officer of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, is pressured into holding the Association responsible and deporting all Chinese associated with them.

Meanwhile, Hartman (Vanness Wu), a Staff Sergeant in the United States Marines, attempts to convince Barton Geddes (Scott Adkins), the Gunnery Sergeant, to incorporate Chinese martial arts into their hand-to-hand combat training. Geddes proves that the Marines' current Karate training is superior by asking him to fight the Marines' Karate instructor, Colin Frater (Chris Collins), who defeats Hartman. Hartman later manages to convince the Commanding Officer about doing so and is instructed to film the Mid Autumn Festival happening at the Association for research, which upsets Geddes.

Geddes asks Frater to challenge the grand-masters at the Festival, defeating a few of them until Ip interferes and defeats him badly. Meanwhile, Wan, who was supposed to be present at the festival, is arrested by the immigration officers. Upon seeing Frater defeated, Geddes barges into the Association to find out where Wan is kept and and uses his strength and karate prowess to brutally defeat all the grand-masters present.

He then threatens Walters into releasing Wan into Marine custody before bringing Wan into the camp to fight him. Due to a tip-off by Billy, a subordinate of Walters and student of Lee, the Association is evacuated by the time the INS conducts its raid. Lee provides refuge for the Association, earning their respect.

At the camp, Wan and Geddes fight, with Wan at first able to match Geddes, but he is eventually overwhelmed and seriously injured. Wan is taken to the hospital, where an emotional Ip calls Fat Bo to reveal his cancer; Fat Bo then angrily forces Ching to talk to his father, after many previous refusals. The older Ip apologizes to his son for striking him and promises to teach Ching Kung Fu when he returns to Hong Kong. Hartman brings Ip to the Marines, and he triumphantly defeats Geddes after a long, strenuous fight.

Wan prepares the referral letter for Ip, but Ip turns it down, having decided against moving to America. Ip returns to Hong Kong and accepts that Ching likes martial arts. A weary but determined Ip instructs his son to film him as he demonstrates Wing Chun on a wooden dummy.

Lee pays respect to Ip at his funeral. Ip succumbed to his cancer in 1972 at the age of 79, and that the Marines officially incorporated Chinese Kung Fu into their training by inviting Chinese martial artists to train them in 2001.