Four Riders: Quick Takes

A Christmas release that year, Four Riders is Chang Cheh making movies in his sleep and he can because he has the ever so watchable cast of Ti Lung, David Chiang and Chen Kuan-Tai on board as well as his action directing team of Lau Kar-Leung and Tong Gaai. So it speaks volumes about his talents when an automatic movie ends up being entertaining. But the story of solders post-war times who ends up fighting drug dealers in Korea (headed by Hong Kong cinema Japanese mainstay Yasuaki Kurata) is still downright sloppily executed, especially from a design point of view as the film is set in the 50s but contains groovy people from the future 70s. Technical illogical moments galore involves a very sophisticated surveillance system and you have actors making zero impact because there's not a single worthy beat to work with. But a whole switcharoo in viewer sensibility is required during this experience.

Some tangents involves how the solders are searching for their freedom again, being worn and some quite illustrated nonsense about The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse makes its way into the flick which makes us realize that it can't possibly represent something meaningful in this package. No, notions of heroism, loyalty and the slow motion filmed deaths (some of which are quite outrageously gory) corresponds to Chang Cheh either testing new grounds in terms of portraying eras (a big F for that attempt then) or simply knowing he has to make a commercial movie or two now and again. Because wonders such as The New One-Armed Swordsman and Boxer From Shantung had came and was to come respectively and I'll never be convinced of this dip in quality from the legend at this time being an actual grave one. Four Riders allows him to have a bit of fun, making sure there's elements imbedded that are expected of him. Nothing represents this as absurdly as the gymnasium showdown as it allows his action directors to roam free without much logic backing it up. Lily Li, Ching Li and Wang Chung also stars.