Chinese-Hong Kong Wuxia film directed by Gordon Chan and Janet Chun. It is the last of The Four trilogy.

I’ve finally finished my marathon of The Four trilogy and I feel—¦ nothing much. To be honest, I don’t really enjoy the trilogy as much as I expected.

There are a number of reasons ranging from bad changes to the characters, lack of emotions and brotherhood between the characters. As a story that focus on The Four (ColdBlood, Emotionless, Life Snatcher and Iron Hands), I would expect more tacitness between them. Because the bonding did improve slightly in the 2nd movie, I was expecting this last one would bring it to a bloom and I can finally see a real team that is well bonded. And I was disappointed once again.

The last movie, the Final battle focuses more on the actions, which is good too, considering that they don’t do well in their emotional scenes. I’ve always enjoy the actions and special effects in its prequels and they still kept me very entertained in this last movie. In fact they get much more magnificent in this one.

However, “Magnificent” doesn’t always equals to good. There are some laughable special effects that I feel they overdid and they reminds me of some old school video games.

But overall, the action are well-choreographed and the special effects enhanced the watching experience greatly.

The plot is still as good as its prequels —“ it’s tight and the story arc is well developed. In this final battle, the emperor finally makes his appearance. I used to think that he is a character that would never appear though he kept getting mentioned. I also have the impression that he is a coward and useless king. But it turn out that he is not at all.

He cares about his citizens and is not the usually “I-am-always-right” kind of ruler. The story starts because of him insisting to make a trip to the city to see for himself how the peasants are living. However, he got ambushed and was separated from his people. He turned to Zhuge Zhengwo for help.

However, he was captured by Emotionless before he could meet Zhuge Zhengwo. From the 2nd movie (The Four 2), we learnt that Emotionless hates the emperor and 12 culprits because of what happened to her family 12 years ago.

Eventually things work out between everyone when the mission becomes clear - to save the empire and emperor from the evil plot of Lord An, the antagonist from the 2nd movie.

To be honest, after watching all 3 movies of the trilogy, I do feel that the movie is much better when you watch it all at one go in a marathon kind of way. It’ll be confusing and complicated if you watch the individual movies with a huge time gap between them because the story is very much linked.

However, I find a very huge letdown in all the 3 movies. The emotions and bonding are never well captured and most of the main characters seem flat and less interesting when compared to the antagonists.

And I actually find out that one culprit which I think spoils the movie —“ Crystal Liu Yifei who plays Emotionless.

She is the female lead, however, I realised that she is quite inconsistent and doesn’t have the charm and ability to convey and create the mood and emotions. She is really just emotionless and not interesting. In some of the scenes, you know that she is just acting. She does all her expressions and body languages well but it’s just —¦ I don’t know, something is just lacking.

I also feel that her chemistry with Deng Chao (ColdBlood) is very inconsistent too and that is pretty obvious on screen. Sometimes, they feel connected, sometimes its just not there.

I guess her weakness is amplified in this last movie. When other characters gets more to work with, she is quickly overshadowed. It also becomes obvious that veteran, Anothy Wong (Zhuge Zhengwo) and Deng Chao (ColdBlood) are the ones that carried the movie on their shoulders.
Although side characters like Ji Yaohua and her shapeshifting senior, An Shigeng, the emperor are pretty memorial as well.

Overall, this trilogy has a pretty solid plot and escalates with each movie. However, if you’re looking for something with great character development and relations then you’ll be disappointed. This trilogy shines in its actions choreography and special effects, and other aspects are just pretty average.