In the Line of Duty 5
10/29/00
Review
Format: DVD
Stars: Cynthia Khan, David Wu (same guy as in Tiger Cage 2), Billy Chow, others

(From the box: I'm gonna do this from now on, just give you what it says on the back if I can read it) Inspector Yeung's cousin, David and his buddy Alan came to Hong Kong for a regular "rest and recreation" with their naval battle group. One day, Alan was killed accidentally. The secreat that Alan was actually a spy was thus disclosed and this led to a series of terror and life threat (sic.) for both David and his girl-friend, May. David decided to seek help from Yeung...

Well that was easy enough. I'll start by saying that the fights in this movie are equally as good... no they're better, than ILD3 and 4. It basically starts off immediately, as usual, with Khan chasing after some whitie (probably a dirty American) who just carjacked some guy. I thought, "Oh great, an ugly guy gets to fight Khan." And believe me this guy is ugly, he looks like Ghallager with dirty hair. Well, it isn't TOO bad, though when the two of them enter an alley Khan has wires on to run on the wall and climb between two walls. But the amazing part is when the guy runs to the road and a truck is passing by at a good 25 mph, and he grabs the back of the truck, swings around, and grabs the bamboo bundles hanging off the end. I couldn't believe it the first time I saw it. Khan does something similar but the truck seemed to be going a lot slower. The two of them jump over to another truck, and I was wondering if Khan had a double or not because her hair seemed to be going in weird places, which meant that it might have been a wig. I dunno these days, it's hard to tell. Some short kickboxing, and the guy falls off and gets hit by a van.



Khan has a fight with another whitie, this one isn't as good, but there's a stunt that he and his partner perform that reminds me of Buster Keaton. The white guy jumps over a big gap between two skyscrapers, and his buddy does the same, and Khan follows but trips, and hangs onto the edge with her fingers. Was it real? I don't know, but it was awesome looking. The white guy didn't look so great at kickboxing and he was too stiff.



Immediately afterwords, David Wu has his own little scene. After escaping a little questioning seminar, he jumps pretty far down into some planters, rolls onto some pipe, runs down, pummels over 3 railings, beats a guy, jumps over a fence, and then seems to do some stunt driving of his own. I just liked this part because it's David Wu running away from cops, and that's fun for some reason.

Khan and Wu end up at the harbor, and Khan fights the American guy again (the second one) and nails him in the air with a flying kick to the side. Not much kickboxing, but it was a cool looking move. Right afterwords, Wu and his girlfriend are in a motorboat and a bad guy is chasing after them. If you can imagine the HK bay with all the ships and racing these things between and around them, then you can imagine this scene.

The next scene is excellent. Khan against a bad guy, pure martial arts for a good minute and a half, without a single break, no BS. The first part is a lot of Chin Na stuff, with Khan doing some of that toss-and-return work on his arms. The guy falls, kicks Khan, and, well, he kicks awesomely. He's short, about her height, and moves professionally unlike the previous opponents. He's not all wacky and weird. They do some more kickboxing on top of two rows of big boxes, moving row to row, and then fight with some small metal pipes. David Wu launches himself at the guy toward the end and that does him in. Awesome scene that was filmed completely in the dark yet was very VERY clear and I knew what was happening every second. Awesome, again.



Khan fights Billy Chow (yay!!) in another dark place, with lots and lots of emphasis on using the environment. The two kickbox very well together, fast hands and feet, and Chow looks great with his long legs and quick waist, and there are some camera angles that really got me into it, like the one way up and you can see their shadows on the dirt. They go all over the place in an outdoor factory place, starting down, going up, up, back down, up, up, around, inside, up, outside, and in. Very cool scene. David Wu is, in the meantime, avoiding a guy with a machine gun and eventually drives a huge truck over the guy's car while he's inside it.



Wu and Khan BOTH fight Billy Chow!! This time in a well-lit house too, so everything is visible. They take him at the same time and I've always found 2 on 1 choreography to be incredibly hard to manage and sometimes it just looks bad. But it's done pretty efficiently here. Wu is weak from getting banged up repeatedly in the movie, so he gets beat around by Chow pretty quickly while Khan goes at him with, again, great looking kickboxing. Anyone who likes stunts mixed with good kickboxing, INDOORS and WELL-LIT, then this is a fight to watch.



Talk about going back to the good 'ol days. Khan and Wu go into General's headquarters and are immediately attacked by 4 men dressed in nice black uniforms, both of them taking on 2 at a time. Sometimes one will get knocked down, then it goes 1 on 1 for a few seconds until the other guy gets up, if that happens at all. Once they're all down, more come, and Khan takes on 2 more while Ng takes care of one. It's not a long scene but it's definitely one the coolest looking and most original I've seen in the ILD series thus far.



Wu and Khan both fight the General immediately afterword, and the guy has no talent. Sorry, but he uses a stick and his moves are poorly executed and he's slow too. To start with, he uses a big ol fake wire move where he jumps onto the side of the staircase and rolls around. Eventually he pops the end off his stick and it has a little knife, and of course David Wu gets stuck with it a few times. Poor guy. Not a good fight really.



Finally, Khan fights a whitie, who was the girl in The Death Games. They kick and punch for a little while and she stabs David with something, who cares what, the guy got stuck again with something. Then she throws a snake at him. Khan and the white girl go into a display room where they throw eachother around and smash through glass and then have a swordfight, which didn't do it for me.



Even though the last 2 enemies sucked, overall I was very satisfied with this movie. The 4 on 2 match, Khan's fight with the guy in the warehouse, her fight with Chow, her fight with Chow a second time alongside David, and the multiple stunts and the fairly interesting plot and cool ending (though I didn't totally understand why it ended the way it did) really hit the spot. Good.

5/5

Update - April 24, 2001 - I want to drop this score to a 4/5 due to it lacking of spark. The more I watch it the more I get disappointed with how little there is. Plus the finale is unexcusable except the 4-man part, which is short. This can't possbily compare to ILD4, so

4/5

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