Si da ming bu

I was genuinely surprised with the movie and I hadn't expected it to turn out to be such an entertaining movie. If you try to imagine mixing movies such as "X-Men" and "Hero" together, then the end result come out to be "The Four" (aka "Si da ming bu"). This is a historical Kung Fu drama spiced up with mystical powers.

The storyline is interesting from the very beginning and just starts to work up in intensity and depth from the very beginning.

To shortly summarize the story; counterfeit bills appear in the capitol and two special government departments work hard to unravel the criminal activities.

This movie makes heavy use of wires, so if you dislike the Wire Fu genre, then chances are that you want to skip on the movie. However, if you enjoy this particular genre, then there is a lot of great wire action to see.

The fighting and action sequences are well-choreographed and equally well executed.

As a story-based movie, it is important to have outstanding and memorable characters. And "The Four" has that. Lots of layers to the characters, and the cast was well picked for the roles and characters. I will say that the cast in the movie was nothing short of impressive. I was particularly impressed with Anthony Chau-Sang Wong and Yifei Liu.

"The Four" is definitely a movie to watch if you enjoy Asian cinema.

Thank God for Netflix because if I didn't have an account, I wouldn't have discovered an enjoyable movie. The negative reviews I read just make me roll my eyes and want to punch those users in the face with a bad of rice hahahaha.

Firstly, I'd like to say that it's obvious that different cultures have their own, unique way of telling stories through film. It's evident in America, Europe, Asia, India and more. I took the movie for what it was and enjoyed it very much. It was like X-Men meets Naruto Shippuden meets Dragon Ball Z. I personally love a light weight corny action film. No one watches for the story, we watch to see some dope fighters go at it and if they have superhuman abilities, it just adds more fuel to the fire.

I enjoyed the small twists and turns. The film kept me interested because I was constantly trying to figure out who was being loyal to whom. There were a lot of characters who appeared to be aligned with one side, then the next thing you know they are fighting for another side. It kept me wanting more. I especially loved seeing certain actors on the big screen again after seeing them give great performances in The Matrix and Forbidden Kingdom.

The set design was dope, the acting was cool. I doubt anyone expects an Oscar award winning acting performance in an action film. The costuming dope. Special effects dope and of course the action was amazing to watch from beginning to end.

Want my advice? Don't listen to the ridiculous and immature reviews below me. This movie embodies what the Asian film market enjoy and it works for them. I enjoyed it and would definitely watch it again.

I enjoy these sorts of exaggerated wuxia (superhuman/magic martial arts) movies, so anyone not into this genre might give it a significantly lower rating.

The primary problem with this movie is, due to the writing, directing, or editing I don't know, its nonsensically fast-paced timing; like it's in some kind of race to finish within its roughly two hour length. Without exaggeration, the pacing of the combat scenes in Michael Bay's first Transformers movie seem relaxed in comparison. A previous reviewer points out that after the first fight scene the action slows down, which is true, but only so much that you can at least make out who's fighting whom and what kind of attack they're using, but not so much that you ever get to really enjoy the combat until the final showdown at the end of the movie.

Like a bad Hollywood action flick, the story gets the same herky-jerky treatment; spending as little time as possible dealing with major plot elements or simply skipping ahead to the next scene altogether and leaving it up to the viewer to figure out in hindsight what must have transpired between scenes. For example, there's a love triangle which has to be pointed out in exposition by other characters because there is literally no time is allotted to developing any kind of relationship between these characters who are supposedly attracted to each other. Even the looks and comments of the trio can only be interpreted as attraction due to the observational comments others make.

Granted, this is a problem which seems to be increasingly creeping into many Chinese films in recent years, with romantic comedies devoid of romance and detective movies that gloss over the detective work, but whether that's a cultural change or if Chinese cinema is adopting the worst of Hollywood's bad habits in an unfortunate attempt to become more commercially viable, the end result is a movie with great promise that falls well short of the mark and ends up being just barely entertaining.

surprised this movie got such a low rating, i would personally rate this a 7. if i was not a fan of this genre then it would at least still be a six. the main reason i think that people don't like this movie is because the story is very convoluted and the main leads love triangle is not explained farther...hence the convoluteness.

there are a lot of things to like about this movie, the cinematography was first rate, the locales were beautiful and enough night and rain scenes to satisfy me. the action scenes were very well done, the acting was not bad, the male leads were better then the female. i love the wuxia genre movies ever since i was a little kid growing up on shaw bros. and golden harvest movies. the wuxia here is very well done although sometimes it felt like a superhero movie( another detriment to this movie...although very well done ). action, martial arts and cgi fans will like this movie, there is a lot of eye candy. the cgi is very good, pretty much seamless interaction with the live-action. some of the locales were breathtaking...the movie is beautiful to look at even though it is not the best made movie.

for me personally, i liked it and can't wait till the second one comes out. i'm hoping that the script will be better because that was one of the main things that kept it from being really, really good. again, if you are a eye-candy movie fan, you're going to like this one.

There is a tradition in Chinese martial arts movies where people strong in "qi" power can jump around light as a feather, fight in treetops, and do other superhuman feats. (Example: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.) There is plenty of that in this movie, and additionally some characters seem to have special powers that other qi masters don't have, making this in some ways like a Western superhero comic story.

My favorite character was the girl who is stuck in a wheelchair, but whose qi powers are strong enough that she is far from useless in a fight. Her name is Yayu but her nickname is "Emotionless". Like Jedi in Star Wars movies can detect each other, she can also detect other nearby qi masters. Another IMDb user review speculates that she is simply a ripoff of two characters from X-Men, but I don't agree.

The movie has a confusing start, but if you stick with it the characters and plot sort themselves out. There is a shifty criminal in a city, and it turns out that three different groups have their eye on him: the police of "Department 6", the undercover police of "The Divine Constabulary", and some mysterious assassins. Additionally a bounty hunter is after him. The initial action is confusing, as it's not clear who is who. But stick with it, and the end of the movie pays off pretty well.

This movie also has a bit of a "steampunk" vibe, with unreasonably advanced clockwork mechanisms that might be partly qi-powered. For no obvious reason there is a giant clockwork crane that Emotionless uses to reach scrolls on the high shelves of a bookcase! And mid-way through the movie, Emotionless gets a nifty upgraded wheelchair that proves useful at the end of the movie.

At nearly two hours it runs a bit longer than necessary; I can think of a few cuts that would not have hurt. Still, I give this a 7 on the 10 scale. If you like fantasy martial- arts you might want to add a point to that! Also, I really liked the music.

Note: some plot threads are left unresolved, setting up for possible sequels, but this movie has a pretty satisfying ending.