Customer Rating: Summary: One of the bad movies starring Donnie Yen. Comment: This is one of the bad movies starring Donnie Yen.
The fighing scenes are slow and below par compared with other good films of his. I found all the kung fu movies made before 1994 had this problem. The acting is bad. The plot is exactly the same as others.
Donnie's famous for his kung fu skills. You should see Iron Monkey, Hero, Butterfly sword, Once upon a time in China 2 and Blade 2 to appreciate how good he is.
Customer Rating: Summary: Action: fantastic quantity, nice quality! Comment: First of all, for all ITLOD series fans, this one is not an intriguing cop movie like, it's an Action film of the highest order. The film is perhaps a definitive Donnie Yen show (beside Iron Monkey/ Tiger Cage 2, perhaps) and it helps that his film associates (his mother's students) John Salvitti ja Michael Woods (a former Navy SEAL, btw) also do a lot of their best here. Definitely this ranks as the best actioner of ITLOD series and a contender for number one modern day fight film ever. By it's fighting content that is.
Being a great Yuen clan fan, this has always been one of my favorite films from them. Full of dangerous stunts and randomly abrupting moments of fiery action, this movie delivers. Plot either sucks, or serves as a vehicle for excusing more fight scenes to happen. Who cares anyway?
I often have compared this to other YWP classic of the period Tiger Cage 2 which was done a year or so later. While it has less action and a humorous tone, ITLOD 4 is dead serious and totally full of fights. Literally, what you get is tons of fights (modern kickboxing with some trademark YWP/Donnie touches thrown in) that jump to the face every five minutes. Some of the fights unfortunately look a bit similar or sometimes even non-interesting, but most often the drive is again maxed with some interesting piece of choreography and great energy from actors involved. Much of this is to thanked by Donnie's own fighting team and Cynthia Khan's secondary yet active participation in action scenes. Though she is not an action star per se, no-one beside Yuen clan can make her look this good.
Stuntman aficionado Cho Wing does tons of double/stunt work in this (the ponytail/eyeglasses bloke in the end), especially to female lead Cynthia Khan. Besides Donnie, I considered him the star of the film, being a great fan of top stuntwork.
In the end of the day, I rate overall this, far cheaper and narratively more repetitive and boring flick, BY it's action, better than Jackie Chan's nominal Police Story (or any Police Story movie). Jackie's film is more memorable and has some killer cinematography, but I prefer intricate kickboxing, cool minor stuntwork and endless row of good/brilliant fight sequences that show some of the best modern day martial arts stuff my both Donnie Yen and master Yuen Woo Ping. A definite classic of cop-kungfu -genre. One not to be missed, especially if one loves raw modern fighting action. Customer Rating: Summary: Terrible story, good fight scenes Comment: If you're half-way bright then you can follow the story, but it's really tiring. The story is trash anyway so it's useless to even spend any time caring who is who and why they want to kill eachother, so just watch the fights. Now the fights are decent, but the best part is the very end with Donnie Yen and the swoll cat he is fighting on the roof... one of the coolest fight scenes I have ever seen. This is a good add to your collection if you are a Donnie Yen fan, or have exhausted pretty much all the other good martial arts movies you can find. You probably won't watch it much after the first time tho - except the end of course. Customer Rating: Summary: donnie yen and cynthia certainly kick ass, but man I can't think of any ways the movie could have been worse. Comment: This movie really gets started off with a bang. It introduces woo-ping's little brother(yuen chat-yor?). He can't really fight btu proves to VERY athletic. Like when he kicks, he can kick VERY high. He just doesn't have that great powerful movie style. He is also the young fok yuen gap(bad translation)in my favorite movie ever, legend of a fighter, and he was perfect for that role until beardy replaced him later in the movie. So the story really makes no sense. Yuen Chat yor has to get away from these guys cause a cop who was just getting shot up, just sort of falls in to yuen's lap. He dodges some bullets, gets away, and then is wanted for murder, but of course he didn't do it.
I am nto going to continue to talk about the story cause it is starting to make me feel sick again. But this movie is really only good for one thing, fastforwarding for the fight scenes. Certainly not even freaking close to some of the best I have ever seen. But they finally have a fight that last longer than 2 minutes at the end. Though the fight makes absolutely no sense at all and the acting is certianly some of the worst I have ever seen, they do bring a minute or maybe even two minutes of excitement. The black dude can go, he has definitely worked with donnie before, you can tell by how comfortable they are with eachother. overall I saw 3 good fights and no other redeeming qualities from this movie.
This dvd release by 20th century fox is in 5.1 sound for both chinese and american languages. The american language is super cheesy but it is not going to exactly help the movie in a any way. No special features that i can remember, it's a fox release. Customer Rating: Summary: 5 Stars for a Martial Arts Movie Comment: ITLOD4 is quite possibly one of the best choreographed films ever. A true testament to the Yuen Clan's skill.
Of course the movie itself is super average, but you really stop caring when the fights are wall to wall. This is definitely one for real die-hard martial arts movie fans.
