Based on the bestselling Chinese novels ‘Si Da Ming Bu’ (‘The Four Great Constables’) by Wen Ruian. ‘The Four’ is the first in the proposed trilogy of adaptions.

 

When counterfeit money begins to circulate through a small town, unrest and instability begin to spread throughout the population.  Investigations soon begin to take place as Department Six (the local police force) hunt down a rival investigate team known as the Divine Constabulary. Unbeknownst to D6, they are a unit commissioned by the Emperor.

 

Leader of Department Six, Commander Liu fires his best man.  Cold Blood (Deng Chao) sends him undercover in to the Divine Constabulary to bring them down from the inside.  However, things don’t go to plan when he uncovers a greater good in the Constabulary that forms a bond between three of the agents; Iron Hands (Colin Chou), Life Snatcher (Ronald Cheng) and Emotionless (Liu Yifei) - working for their chief; Master Zhuge (Anthony Wong).

 

Add into this the complicated love triangle, double crossing agents, the undead army and magic that forms a Chinese flavour of the ‘X – Men’.  This combination makes ‘Thr Four’ far from boring.   Powers of Fire, Ice, Air and Telepathy work together to enhance the amazing fight scenes that threaten to destry each abd every set and steal every scene.  Typical of scenes in many Eastern Martial Arts films its hard to see why there isn’t a bigger market here in the West, pitting most Hollywood action films to shame.

 

Chao brings a flawed character in Cold Blood that makes a varied change from the perfect hero to someone who makes choices that only add to his accomplishments and further disappointment to those around him. His decisions to unintentionally pull at the heartstrings of other characters and his oblivious to absurb what is happening around him create a greater bond between character and audience that many heroes cant relate to.

 

Whether this may be a sense of “lost in translation” but each character has at least two names (many of which are unrelatable – Life Snatcher?) and can get confusing mixed upon the martial arts and constant dialogue as most of the subtitles either get ignored or lines of passage assembled together when the jigsaw finally clicks into place.

 

A flaw that somehow breaks the flow of what was meant to be a low key martial arts blast, soon embroiled in a deep story that doesn’t reward with patience, character building or significance in the final chapter.

 

With an epic slice of undead action raised in the last 20 minutes, this comes really unexpected and out of nowhere with only small clues dotted throughout the script. As the plots of several storylines interweve, the big push towards who is guilty of counterfeiting coins becomes a mere excuse to show the Four kicking undead ass and as great as this is to watch, would be a better climax if the build up was more prominent and a little darker ala ‘The Pirates of the Caribbean’.

 

Knowing that ‘The Four’ is part one of an upcoming trilogy only adds further glee as to what is to come. With its shortfalls of kick starting a new franchise, now that the scene is set, we can come to expect more substance behind the action and as the last quarter reflects, ‘The Four’ ends as it should have began, and hopefully how it will. Violent, cool and a bit more punch.