★★★★½
“A thinly connected series of action set-pieces…but what set-pieces!”
Back in the early nineties, I saw a double-bill of this and Jackie Chan’s Police Story at the late, lamented Scala Cinema in London, and it blew my mind. I had literally never seen anything like them before. The only martial arts movies I’d watched previously were crappy American ones, which made little or no impression. That afternoon changed my life, and awakened a love of the genre that persists to this day. But would In the Line of Duty 4 stand the test of time? There are certainly movies I loved from the same era, which are now a bit cringe, to put it mildly. So it was with some trepidation that I hit play…
Nope, it’s still goddamn awesome. Sure, it’s a bit rough around the edges, and both the plot and performances are little more than means to an end. But the end justifies the means, 100%. I can’t remember the last time a film provoked so many exclamations from me. It felt like every other scene, there’d be another terrific feat of physical prowess, agility or simply endurance. It’s amazing to see Donnie Yen, then a young, skinny and rough-edged twentysomething, but clearly with raw talent in spades. It took almost thirty-five years for him to get the recognition he deserved, with his co-starring role in John Wick 4.
According to another review, 42 of the film’s 93 minutes are action. Reading this, my immediate reaction was, “That little?” Because it feels like it’s almost a non-stop procession of set-pieces, a highlight reel in feature form. It’s not just hand-to-hand combat either. There are some great vehicular stunts, such as a motorcycle chase, or a fabulous battle in, on and around an ambulance. It’s clear that we really have Cynthia Khan dangling off the front of the vehicle, in a way that looks genuinely dangerous, and quite probably was [the eighties in Hong Kong cinema wasn’t exactly a poster-child for health and safety!] I do wish they hadn’t undercranked some sequences; they’re impressive enough they don’t need to be sped-up.
For when all is said and done, the fights are flat-out awesome. It’s not just Khan and Yen, though they obviously get most to do. Everyone here is well up to the task, both showing off their own stuff and letting the stars look good by selling for them. On the female front, I want to give special praise to Farlie Ruth Kordica, who fights Cynthia around a lift-shaft in another sequence which feels disturbingly life-threatening. She only appeared in a couple of other films, which feels like a real shame, based on her performance here. It’s a wonderfully inventive scene (bottom), taking full advantage of the potential in the environment.
There is a case to be made that Yen is the star here, above Khan. The end caption doesn’t even mention her character, Insp. Yeung Lai-Ching, though Khan definitely is not outclassed. But Lai-Ching is the film’s emotional heart, always intent on doing the morally ‘right’ thing, even if it’s not in line with the law. She is the Jiminy Cricket, trying to keep Donnie’s loose cannon in check, while also trying to figure out who’s the mole in her department. The story, incidentally, has aged well: the CIA openly dealing drugs in order to fund Latin American rebels? That’s not something you would expect to see in an American film from that time, the whole Iran-Contra thing being seen as a bit of an embarrassment. Fittingly, it is Khan’s character who delivers the final blow to this Yankee scheme, falling to its doom and taking the American flag with it.
I will admit that the soundtrack is underwhelming: despite two credited composers, it feels like stock tracks pulled at random from the library. There are also times when the plot logic is less than logical, with bad guys and good guys popping up in convenient places for the next showdown, with little or no explanation. Yet this hardly dampens things, because: yep, means to an end. The eighties was an amazing decade for action cinema, from The Empire Strikes Back, through The Terminator, Aliens and Die Hard. I can honestly say that In the Line of Duty 4 deserves to be ranked among those, and remains one of the best examples of Hong Kong cinema, doing what it does best.
[Original review] I don’t think I’ve ever seen a HK film with more action; it seems that every five minutes, along comes another breathtaking fight or stunt sequence. Of course, when you have a master at the helm (Yuen did the fights for The Matrix), you expect a little more, but this is fabulous, even by his standards.
Donnie Yen is perhaps the most under-rated martial artist of our generation, and watching him here, it’s hard to see why he hasn’t become a major star, rather than lurking in (effective) supporting roles in Blade 2 and Highlander: Endgame. For speed, agility and skill, his fights are almost without equal, and most female co-stars would be overshadowed. Fortunately, Cynthia Khan, though occasionally clearly doubled, does more than enough to keep on the same lap – the fight atop, alongside, and dangling from the front of, a speeding ambulance is eyepoppingly extreme, while her aerial battle around a lift shaft is also worthy of mention.
The story is clearly secondary to all this, but for the record, Khan and Yen are cops, one from Hong Kong, one from America, who team up to find a witness to a murder. Double-dealing and twists abound, though most are so obvious, you suspect they were just waiting for cast members to get out of hospital. :-) Interesting to see a foreign view of American cops – even Yen is a barely-controlled psychonaut. Khan is more sympathetic, but characterisation never goes beyond the most basic. However, this is an action movie, and as such, it’s near-perfect, with invention, energy and hardcore guts to spare from all concerned.
Dir: Yuen Wo-Ping
Star: Cynthia Khan, Donnie Yen, Michael Wong, Yuen Yat Choh
It’s really the finale which makes this stand out – not necessarily for its qualities (though it’s far from bad), more for the batshit insanity. It sees ex-cop Michelle Yip (Yeoh) storm a construction site in an armoured car, to rescue the coffin containing the body of a colleague, which has been suspended from a crane by the bad guy. How the hell did we get here? Good question. It all starts on a plane back from Japan, where among the passengers are Yip, Interpol agent Peter Yamamoto (Sanada, recently seen creating doomsday diseases in Helix) and security guard Michael Wong (Wong – a lot of thought clearly went into that character). On the flight, there’s a hijack, in an attempt to free a killer being extradited to Hong Kong; our heroic trio foil it, killing the hijackers. But that just brings down the wrath of the rest of the gang, who vow to take their revenge on the people who killed their colleagues. And they really don’t care who gets in their way, as a mass gun-battle at a night-club shows – it also gets Yip taken off the case.
As with the preceding entry, there’s a smattering of social commentary; here, the topic is Vietnamese boat people, who reached Hong Kong in droves during the late eighties. The bad guys are a group of pirates, led by Keung (Chu), who prey on the boats, stripping the refugees of valuables before killing them. On one raid, member of the crew John (Yam) recognizes friend Gary (Chow): while he manages to hide Gary, and stop him from being killed, the stowaway suffers cinematically-convenient amnesia, until the boat docks in Hong Kong.
Sporting the subtitle “Forbidden Arsenal” – though if the poster (right) is anything to go by, it’s more of a domtitle – this further weakens the series by making Cynthia Khan only one-third of the action. She’s joined here by Chen (Lee), a cop from mainland China, and Hua (Do), a Taiwanese policemen, who get caught by the locals while they are operating, independently, in Hong Kong as part of their investigation of an arms smuggling gang run by Paul (Shou). Rather than deporting the uninvited guests, they are brought on to assist Madam Yeung (Khan), but soon discover one of the problems about taking on gun-runners: there’s a good chance they’re going to be rather better-armed than you.
After the magnificence of Donnie Yen and Khan in its insane predecessor, the fifth installment was always going to have a tough job living up to the same standard. On its own terms, it’s perfectly reasonable, but certainly suffers in the comparison, not least because the storyline is strikingly similar. Once again, there’s an innocent who gets caught up in murky dealings between Inspector Yang Lei-Ching (Khan) and the CIA, and finds themselves on the run from a pack of assassins, unsure who to trust – except Yang, of course. In this case, it’s her cousin, David (Wu), a marine who has returned to Hong Kong, only to find himself under suspicion for espionage. In particular, being part of a Korean group, led by a man known only as ‘The General’ (Chow), who deals in Western secrets. It’s up to David and Lei-Ching to prove otherwise – if they can stay alive long enough to do it.
Firstly, in case you’re wondering, there 
Purely on a historical level, this 1985 film merits attention since it started the whole action-heroine genre in Hong Kong cinema, which thrived for the next decade, producing some of the finest entries ever made. It also was, effectively, the start of the careers of Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock. Interesting to see how they’ve since headed in opposite directions: Rothrock to low-budget erotic thrillers, Yeoh to the Academy Awards.