In the Line of Duty 4 with Donnie Yen

In the Line of Duty 4 – this 1989 action classic showcases some of Donnie Yen’s earlier action at it’s best!

The movie starts off in Seattle with detective Yeung as she investigates a shipment from Hong Kong. After being caught, she poses as an illegal immigrant and goes back to the house of one of the men Luk Kai Chai. After Luk returns home with the detective (his detective status unbeknownst to him still), his brother comes home and a large group of threatening gansters follow him. Naturally, they all get into a big kung fu fight which shows of Luk’s fighting ability as well as Yeungs.

We’re then introduced to Donnie Yen’s character, who is given the unimaginative name of Captain Donny Yan. Donny chases down and fights off a cocaine dealer, showing off his moves to the audience.

Eventually there is a fire fight between some crims at the shipyard and one policeman, who caught the criminals red handed and photographed them during their dealings. The policeman is shot and hands film from the camera to Luk, and tells him to deliver it to the police. He immediately loses the film and is caught up as a suspect of the shooting.

After being mistreated at the police station and bashed, Luk is forced to fight back to defend himself. He then poses as a policeman and escapes before running to Hong Kong. He is then followed there before being caught and eventually protected by Donny Yan (Donnie Yen) and Yeung as both the police and the criminals behind the whole mess put pressure on Luk and try to get the film from him, despite the fact he doesn’t have it.

A Donnie Yen Classic!

This is Donnie Yen at his best alongside many other top performers – he’s not ‘the’ main character but stars alongside the character Yeung (played by Cynthia Khan). It’s your standard 80’s cop movie with terrible acting, dialogue and music – electric drums and all! But that’s what you expect from these older movies.

There’s a bit of good cop bad cop between Yeung and Donny, while corruption within their team is another major factor. With Luk as the innocent victim caught up in the whole mess, it gets pretty interesting when we see just how fantastically he can fight – despite still being a scared and panicky little man.

Overall the story is pretty flat, there’s lots of short tempers and arguments between everyone on the force and teamwork seems almost nonexistent in some scenes. But this tensions is important as a more calm, co-operative team of buddies would be as boring as watching the grass grow.

The bad sounds effects and music back up the horrible 80’s fashion and hair styles that I can’t help but notice as I watch this movie, forever dating this film. But that’s what makes this move the perfect representation of a top 80’s martial arts / cop movie, containing all of those old elements.

Somehow the cheesy 80’s feel is just awesome to watch. What sounds bad seems to work in these 80’s action flicks.

The Action & Martial Arts

Remember when fight scenes were slightly sped up? This is one of those movies but boy does it work well!

With the terrific physical performance of Donnie Yen and the rest of the cast, the illusion of crazily fast and skilled fighters battling out is created in a perfect way – in that 80’s style! The fights are terrific exchanges of crisp martial arts movements with great hand to hand combat mixed with those impressively fast and high kicks. Each fight just has a rhythm and pace that keeps going and going and is just awesomely entertaining to watch.

With the quality there is also a great quantity of fights, with action kicking off almost instantly and popping it’s head up every 15 or 20 minutes (at least) making this movie absolutely packed and not getting too stale whilst waiting for the next fight.

If you’re a fan of the Donnie Yen in the recent years, the crazy and fast fight scenes performeed to perfection, then you’ll need to take a step back 25 years and check this film out. It’s absolutely tops and one Yen’s classics!