THE FOUR – The Blu Review

Review by Sam Moffitt
I had held off a long time on getting a Blu-Ray player when Tom Stockman, my friend at We Are Movie Geeks, sent me a screener of The Four, in Blu-Ray format! So it was off to K-mart and then home to set up a new RCA Blu-Ray player, to take the place of my RCA dvd player, (also purchased at K-Mart by the way.) And quite honestly I cannot think of a better movie to christen my new player with than The Four, an amazing Hong Kong action movie that is also a political thriller, a police procedural, a historical epic, a romantic comedy, and a horror movie with a cast of well over a dozen major characters.

Director Gordon Chan, who directed the incredible Fist of Legend and co-director Janet Chun manage an incredible feat of balancing all these elements and all these characters without once making a false move or letting us lose track of who is doing what to whom and why.

In an opening reminiscent of both scenes from Robert Zemeckis’ films and the Mission Impossible series, we are introduced to both the Station Six Constabulary,( the regular police,) and the Divine Constabulary, a special unit who answers only to the King (I’m guessing the correct translation would be Emperor) in what I’m also guessing is mid 19th Century China. Both groups of police are out to arrest a coin counterfeiter and seize his fake coin press. Only the coin press is not fake and some one within the regular police wants it for his own nefarious purposes.

The regular police, led by Taishen Chen as Sheriff King, hire in a group of master female swordsmen (swordswomen?) just before going in to bust the counterfeiter. All this without knowing the Divine Constabulary, led by Anthony Wong Chau-Sang (the only actor I recognized, and I watch a lot of Chinese movies!) are also planning to bust the counterfeiter. Mr. Wong had a large part in The Painted Veil and the absolute masterpiece Infernal Affairs. Here he plays the leader of the Divine Constabulary, Zhuge Zhenwo, and a more upright, virtuous and honorable cop you will find nowhere else.
Among the Divine group are The Four of the title. Yifei Liu as Emotionless, a handicapped young lady, in body only. Emotionless has the ability to hurl weapons at people with her mind alone, and also to make solid objects crumble, read people’s minds and fly through the air (in fact all of the characters can fly via the kind of wire work seen in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,) only here the wire work is taken to incredible lengths.

In the making of documentary Ms Liu says this production had no less than 19 cranes, all for wirework with the actors doing some outrageously high stunts hanging from them. Incredible!

Also with the Divines are Ronald Cheng as The Life Snatcher, a collector of bad debts who does not want to work on the right side of the law but changes his mind after drinking with the Divines, who get to eat and drink very well for Government employees. Colin Chau as Iron Hands seems to be part black smith, part scientist and part alchemical wizard. At one point he builds a new wheel chair for Emotionless that runs on mind power alone, and not just Emotionless’ powerful brain waves, anybody’s mind will keep the chair in motion!

In fact everyone in this movie seems to have supernatural powers! And of course everybody is excellent at martial arts, the fight scenes really are incredible and they are not the beautiful-enough-to-be-a-painting fight scenes of Zhang Yimou. Fight scenes in The Four are down and dirty with people and property being busted all to pieces in showers of plaster, dirt, blood and broken crockery.

And last, but not least, The Four is complete with Cold Blood played by Chao Deng. Cold Blood is kicked out of the regular police, in order to be taken in by the Divines to act as a mole for the villain of the piece, An Shigeng, also known as the God of Wealth, very well played by Xiu Bo Wu. Cold Blood is of course very conflicted as he comes to respect the Divines, doesn’t really like working for the God of Wealth in his schemes and falls in love with Emotionless, who resembles a young Gong Li.

Not only can Emotionless read Cold Blood’s thoughts about her, everybody else knows what’s happening too! As if things weren’t complicated enough the leader of the female sword fighters within the Station Six Constabulary, Ji Yaihua, played by Yi Yan Jiang, develops a crush on Cold Blood and is willing to do anything, including murder, to get him. Amazingly the movie does not treat her as a villain, just a little blinded by love is all. Besides, she’s a beautiful woman, we just have to forgive her!

Did I mention that Cold Blood is also a Werewolf? He is, and this is the only part of the movie I find puzzling. Cold blood tells everybody that he was raised by wolves, and the full moon has nothing to do with his transformations. Cold Blood turns into a savage animal, only when he is really angry! Exactly like….yes…..you guessed it, The Incredible Hulk! The transformation scenes are so similar there is no mistaking the homage (or is this a rip-off? So hard to tell sometimes!) I kept expecting the werewolf thing to have some major payoff, like a transformation at just the right moment to defeat the bad guys. No, Cold Blood only changes twice, once with the Divines and he almost kills some of them. In fact in Werewolf mode Cold blood never kills anybody. In his normal form he, and all the other Divine Constabulary, kick some serious butt. Forget about opening up a can of Chinese whoop ass, these guys open up a freight train full of whoop ass!

And to add even more to the supernatural angle The God of Wealth, in addition to making counterfeit coins and deliberately wrecking the economy of China is also raising an army of the dead! Yes, here too there be zombies, they are not flesh eaters but they do their master’s bidding, like all good zombies and scatter into dust when they are beaten down.

Just exactly why The God of Wealth is doing all this is the great mystery of this wondrous film. He even tells Ji Yaihua that she could not possibly understand why he is doing what he does. Maybe he just enjoys being the bad guy? And so, in the final showdown, we do not exactly say good night to the bad guy. I really don’t want to give any spoilers but this movie is left wide open for a sequel. And with good reason, based on a novel beloved in China The Four was announced as the first part of a trilogy. And I would call that a good thing. If this crew can keep up this level of action, story and best of all character this will be a franchise to be reckoned with.

Which brings me to the best part of The Four, in my humble opinion. Yes the action scenes are terrific, The Four is beautifully shot, edited and looks terrific in high definition Blu-Ray, the story is engrossing and even with all the characters (there are at least a dozen more that I have not mentioned) you rarely get confused as to what is happening. But best of all The Four takes time to let the characters grow and grow on you. Every one of the characters, even minor ones, are given moments to shine and all are really quite loveable, yes even the villain! Xiu Bo Wu is obviously having so much fun playing the bad guy you can’t help but side with him, you end up hoping he can actually pull off his scheme!

Old school kung fu movies rarely took time to build characters like that, there wasn’t enough time when your crew is trying to cram in as many fight scenes as you could into a 90 minute feature. Chinese films have come a long way in the last 20 to 30 years. They just keep getting better if you ask me.

As far as extras there is nothing here that you wouldn’t find on a regular dvd, there is no picture in picture option, no director’s, or anybody else’s, commentary. There is a great making of documentary showing just how much work went into making The Four. Just like Hollywood actors the cast and crew tell us how much fun they had and how much work went in the film. And being a Chinese film apparently the food was terrific. Also some very brief deleted scenes and previews for other Well Go USA releases.

So yes, I’m glad I finally went to Blu-Ray and that I got to watch such a terrific movie as The Four as my opening night feature! I expect I’ll have to re-watch everything I know and love that has now been released on Blu-Ray, I can think of worse ways to spend my time!