In the Line of Duty 4 (1989) – DVD

In the Line of Duty IV
皇家師姐Ⅳ直擊證人
Wong ga si je IV: Jik gik jing yan
**½/****
starring Donnie Yen, Cynthia Khan, Yat Chor Yuen, Michael Wong
screenplay by Cheung Chi Shing & Wang Wing Fa
directed by Yuen Woo Ping

by Bill Chambers Generally regarded as the best chapter in the series (and released in America prior to any of the others), Yuen Woo Ping’s In the Line of Duty 4 is an effective action spectacle and a mediocre cop drama; intense though it may be, the film is simply not of a calibre that leaves you remembering it as such. I know there are people who swear by its star, Donnie Yen, but I’ve seen him in about six pictures now (most recently, Zhang Yimou’s awesome Hero), and I don’t find his screen presence all that enthralling. If he’s eschewed the peacocking that has catapulted his contemporaries in HK cinema to international stardom, he’s also lacking in the animal magnetism that keeps your eyes on one blur as opposed to another blur during a martial-arts brawl. Good fighter, of course. Yen is probably the biggest name in In the Line of Duty 4‘s bargain cast, a fact only emphasized by the wishful misprinting of Ping’s name above the title (implying that he’s Yen’s co-star rather than his director) on the front of Fox’s new R1 DVD release.

More confusion arises from a read-through of the plot synopsis Fox provides on the back cover of the disc. Yen and Cynthia Khan are described as “two cops from both sides of the Pacific,” which I think means one is from the States and one is from Asia but is mostly the copywriters hedging their bets as to where the movie takes place. Rechristened Richy after years of having his name translated as Luk, the civilian hero of the picture (Yat Chor Yuen) is scolded for assaulting a Seattle police officer and borrows his roommate’s green card to return to Hong Kong, but I have a hard time swallowing an all-Asian police force and Cantonese-fluent CIA agents in the birthplace of Starbucks and Sub Pop Records. Whatever the case, Richy is a dockworker who witnesses some espionage-type stuff, and there is microfilm involved (if for no other reason than that microfilm was the MacGuffin of choice in the 1980s), and Richy’s roommate, Ming (Liu Kai-chi), sacrifices himself to help his friend escape hired goons in one of the most sadomasochistic sequences I’ve ever come across.

If the rest of the film were pitched at this set-piece’s nihilistic level, In the Line of Duty 4 might’ve earned its exploitation stripes: Like so much that tumbles from the HK assembly line, the picture’s aspirations to violence are purely an aesthetic concern. As a mole is revealed and Richy continues to protest his innocence before cops and criminals alike, In the Line of Duty 4 veers, as expected of the genre, between high camp (though the comedy is not nearly as enervating as one has been conditioned to dread), high melodrama, and what I think of as MacGyver fu, where opponents give their fists an assist with found objects. In one of the showstopping fights here, Khan retaliates against a henchman using a hospital bed and its comatose patient as weapons. Although the choreography is consistently breathtaking (would you expect anything less with Ping–late of Kill Bill‘s two volumes–in the driver’s seat?), the skirmishes tend to feel truncated. Is it that they’re missing the iconic thrust of a Jet Li or a Jackie Chan?

THE DVD
In association with Montreal-based Fortune Star, Fox offers In the Line of Duty 4 on DVD in a sterling presentation. Considering the choppy, blurry, misframed imports to which HK connoisseurs have become accustomed, the miracles performed by Fortune Star cannot be overestimated. In the Line of Duty 4‘s 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is hugely appealing, although it emphasizes Jimmy Au and Queenia Ma’s bland lighting schemes, and the age-related grain may not suit all tastes. Comparing the Cantonese DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes (while ignoring the similarly configured English dubs altogether), I noticed that the tracks scarcely differ apart from the former’s more stomach-churning deployment of the LFE channel. The surrounds are used very sparingly in either case. Original and revisionist trailers for the film plus trailers for six other Fortune Star acquisitions–Heart of Dragon, City Hunter, Hong Kong 1941, Magnificent Warriors, Naked Killer, and Magnificent Butcher–round out the disc.

95 minutes; R; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, English DTS 5.1, Cantonese DD 5.1, Cantonese DTS 5.1; English (optional) subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Fox