The Four - review
Directed by Gordon Chan
Stars: Anthony Wong, Colin Chou, Deng Chao, Crystal Liu Yifei and Ronald Cheng

The Four brings you supernatural Kung-Fu but will it be a four star review.

Zhu Zhengwo (Anthong Wong), is the leader of the of the  four constables who all work for The Divine Constabulary who have been given the highest power by their king to investigate criminals.  Zhu Zhengwo leads Sheng Yayu (Crystal Liu YiFei), Life Snatcher (Ronald Cheng) and Iron Hands (Collin Chou) as they set out to find who is behind a counterfeiting ring that is flooding the town with illegal money.

Leng Lingqi (Deng Chao) joins up with The Divine Constabulary as a mole sent by the government agency Department Six to infiltrate the group and find out what they are doing.

Meanwhile The Sheriff King Liu (Cheng Tai-Shen) is collaborating with rich businessman  An Shigeng (Wu Xiu-Bo) who maybe behind the criminal activity due to the fact that powers even stretch to raising an army of the undead.

Throw in a love triangle between Shang, Leng and Ji Yaohua (Jiang Yiyan), the Department Six head of security, and you have a parallel story running throughout the film.

All the characters in the film have some type of super power Sheng with her telekinesis and mind reading powers to Shang with his part man part wolf  transformation.  I know what your thinking its the X-Men.  It could be as the film is based on a series of books published in 1970's, X-Men dated back to the 1960's.  Sorry I digress.

The film for me entertained, it perhaps lost its way in the middle, with the loss of tension with the villain known upfront and just waiting until The Divine Constabulary finally catch up with them.  The love triangle also took centre stage at times and took away from the story or action.

The action though when it did come was fast and furious with each of  the title characters letting loose with their supernatural Kung-Fu fists and feet and as is the way with most of these type of films plenty of flying around on rooftops.

Still if you want an entertaining movie that will wash over you with some great set-pieces and fill 2 hours of your time you could do worse and as this is set to be a trilogy I think Gordan Chan has served up a fair starter and has enough meat on the bone to serve up a tasty Main course with his next instalment.

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