June 27: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Sammo Hung! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.

The martial arts choreography for Ip Man comes from Sammo Hung and Tony Leung Siu-hung. Hung had previously collaborated with Wilson Yip and Donnie Yen when he acted with them in SPL: Sha Po Lang. Hung was the perfect person to be the choreographer for this because he’d already worked on two other Wing Chun movies, Warriors Two and The Prodigal Son.

But Donnie Yen had the roughest challenge, as he spent months preparing to play Ip Man by doing intense Wing Chun training and only eating once a day. His goal was to show the special skills of the martial art and play Ip Man as a cultured man.

He lives in Foshan, which was a central part of Southern Chinese martial arts, a place where the many schools of combat would compete in often secret matches. One of those matches, Ip Man against Liu (Chen Zhihui), gets publicized by a young boy named Yuan (Wong You-nam). But the fights stop when the Second Sino-Japanese War begins.

Ip and his family are forced to leave their mansion and move into a small apartment, as the Imperial Japanese Army has taken their home to use as a military headquarters. All Ip can do for work is to toil in a mine, where he meets Yuan’s brother Lin (Xing Yu) and becomes his friend. But not for long, as when the Japanese General Miura (Hiroyuki Ikeuchi) challenges any miner to a fight — for a bag of rice — he kills Lin.

Things have gotten so bad that even Liu has taken to stealing rice, which ends up with him shot in the head. Miura’s karatekas are destroying the Chinese kung fu experts, so Ip Man demands to fight ten at once and easily defeats them. He must also stop Jin Shanzhao (Fan Siu-wong) and his gang from bothering the town. Once he learns that Yuan is in the gang, he takes steps to save his friend’s brother.

Miura asks Ip to train the Japanese soldiers, but Ip refuses and challenges the Japanese soldier to a match. Miura accepts the challenge to uphold his honor and crush the Chinese spirit. One of the other Japanese soldiers, Sato (Tenma Shibuya), promises to kill Ip if he wins.

As Ip Man became Bruce Lee’s martial arts master, you can guess the end of the movie. But getting there is incredible, as Hung’s fights are incredible. The closing fight is an amazing dance of violence and as the Chinese swarm their Japanese enemies, Ip Man and his family run through the chaos and into, well, four more movies.