The Four

[Drunk Monk]

This reunites Colin Chou with Greg and my fav Chinese starlet, Crystal Liu Yifei, and adds the great HK veteran Anthony Wong. It's a wuxia flick with a Shanghai Steampunk leaning, based on a popular modern wuxia novel. Okay, in all honesty, wuxia is basically Chinese comic books, and The Four has been unfairly compared to Avengers because it's a band of heroes with superpowers and issues. The special effects are decent. There's some nice fight scenes with fireballs and swords and a lot of flying about. I was entertained, although I started this before the Olympics and finished it somewhere before they ended, so I only saw it in chunks which is a good way to view effect-laden wuxia films. Crystal is really good in this. She plays this wheelchair-bound psychic/telekinetic, although her powers are never clearly defined as she can fight on crutches, see hidden intentions and Jedi objects like projectiles, including crazy-shaped shuriken flung at her by the dozen. Plus she has this weird steampunk wheelchair that can make her stand up as if on a dolly and mounts in this huge arm so she can reach all over this massive wall file of scrolls. The film had a lot of style with long panning shots and some cool imagery. Not a mind blowing flick, but an interesting example of the direction kung fu flicks are going now. I like fights with fireballs and swords.