10 Best CG-Free Martial Arts Movies

9. Ip Man

Donnie Yen has been a staple feature of Hong Kong action cinema for many years, yet despite solid performances in movies such as Iron Monkey and Once Upon a Time in China II (in which he played the villain to Jet Li's hero), he never quite had the same break into stardom as some of his contemporaries. All that changed with the release of Ip Man in 2008, a biopic about the legendary Yip Man, grandmaster of Wing Chun and master to Bruce Lee. Set against the backdrop of the brutal Sino-Japanese War of the 1930s, Ip Man is a martial arts movie with epic pretensions; an ambitious historical scope which director Wilson Yip largely succeeds in pulling off. It also features some stunning fight sequences, filmed with beautiful cinematography usually reserved for art house movies. It no doubt helped considerably having the incredibly talented Sammo Hung (who we'll hear more about later on) choreographing the outstanding fight scenes. Donnie Yen described Ip Man as the most emotionally and mentally difficult film of his career, but fortunately for him it's also undoubtedly his finest.