User reviews

Four guys (Blaze, Tiger, Ace and Dragon) work at a tin mining operation. When they decide to see the boss about their bad working conditions, the boss plans for the entire crew to be offed cuz paying slave wages isn't as bad as having people talking bad about you. Naturally, our four heroes barely survive and then plot their revenge. Bandied about as Malaysia's first martial arts film, it might also be their last thanks to some unwise choices by director C.L. Hor. The four leads are pretty good fighters but the director does them an incredible disservice by doing stupid camera/editing tricks every two seconds in the fights. Worst of all, he inserts this cartoon blood (yeah, cartoon) that explodes anytime someone gets hit. Dumbest editorial decision I've seen since Uwe Boll editing in clips from the game in HOUSE OF THE DEAD.

Well first of all the CG was rather disappointing I didn't rent the movie to watch CG blood I rented it to watch a martial arts film which is what it is. It has nothing to do with historical facts (No more than say Indiana Jones) It has nothing to do with acting (because the acting was horrible) It had nothing to do with the directors abilities (because they are non existent) It was a martial arts film ( I am a wushu Thai Chi fan) The four leads were Wushu National champions (unlike a previous post that said they were "pretty good fighters" The lead bad guy was also a wushu nation champion) If you just want to watch a martial arts film its fine but if you want history or acting I would say no.

Can't blame the poor reception of this film. I spent RM8 on this DVD title and I think it was my poorest judgment of spending that RM8.

First of all, the story line. It's so awfully mixed up, yeah of course, there was a plot: Men get killed, Men revenge, Kill each other, Good guys win.

Despite of the poor CG blood, come on, repetitive scenes! Repeatedly shown to remind the viewers that the same incident has happened. What kind of directors are dumb enough to 'pis' off the viewers by doing dumb tricks again,again and again. Wake up, the viewers are not as dumb as you, OK?!

Acting was even worst, can't blame 'em, none of them are professional actors, they can't even speak proper dialogs. There are huge load of 'sheet' from this movie that disgust me, sound, visual, dialogs, acting, story line, casting etc.

I don't even want to think back how I could sat there and endured the suffering by letting this piece of 'sheet' movie play on my TV! This movie is a disgrace to all Malaysian. Please do all Malaysian a favor, don't advertised this movie as "Made in Malaysia"!

Yes i totally agreed with cffong, this work of disgrace is soo horrible it actually cause me nightmares , few days of sleepless nights, its so bad that thinking about it will traumatize me all over again.

The visual effect is work than any Malaysian movie made in the 70's, director doesn't even understand the concept of story telling, no focal point on any characters, story flow and script close to non existence, the writer tries to make it historical throw is some fictional tin miner story, with not a single reference to the actual deal, then all of sudden it becomes a kungfu flick where all the miners turn mortal combatan, zzzzzz.....

Its like the director and writer tries to torture me with bad actings, story, visual and sound. Pushing the viewer to the limit, making them suicidal,

I warn u all that haven't seen it, its a CRIME AGAINST NATURE , a sin among men, don't put yourself to such cruel torture, but then again one could always buy it and send to ur mortal enemy, death by movie trauma.

I apologize in advance for the subpar quality of my writing in this particular review, but I needed the better part of three bottles of wine just to get through this mess. If I had known ahead of time what was in store, I would have shelved the wine and gone straight for the whiskey.

Anyway, this film takes four great fighters with multiple championships under their belts (some of them world-level), and yet instead focusing on their skills and making an entertaining martial arts film, 75% of the film is dedicated to giving you an aneurysm.

-There is no focal point to the story (and I use the word "story" very loosely"), and the characters have no personality except for their sentence-long introduction during the opening credits.

-There are these random jumps in time with no indication or explanation, so every time you're left confused for a few moments as you figure out if this is a flashback or a sudden fast-forward or something else. I guess they are trying to be edgy or whatever here, but all it does is destroy what little pacing the story has.

-Most of the movie just doesn't make any sense. If you're a mine owner on the cusp of expansion, and your long-time partner/human resources guy voices a concern that many of the workers are exhausted and not as productive, why would you respond by slaughtering the whole lot of them (while losing about a dozen guards in the process as well) and burning down your own building that you used to house them? Why does the main goon rip his shirt off and stands in front of the burning wreckage for a solid minute, screaming and flexing his biceps?

-The most annoying thing for me personally was the blood splatter effect. And I do mean splatter, as the slightest wound would send a veritable geyser onto the screen. I'm not sure if they were trying to emulate the style of Sin City (the black and white combat scenes with accented blood is a possibility) or 300 (the whole hyper-violence and blood geysers thing), but it falls lightyears short. The effect basically looks like some of the earlier Doom video games. That, or they just drew it directly onto the print with a red sharpie.

I blame this abortion on the fact that pretty much the entire art design/direction team (including the director himself) share the same surname. It is clear to me that this family of monsters akin to those hill-dwelling mutants, except watching this film is a far more brutal experience than even mutant-hillbilly rape.

In summation, I would rather get kicked in the nuts by the entire U.S. soccer team rather than watch a minute of this film again. The Hor family needs to be stopped. I would prefer a public execution (hey, maybe we could use their weird method of hanging you from bamboo with a blood drain in your neck), but I'll accept neutering so they cannot propagate their cursed bloodline.

Now where's that bottle?

I need whoever reads this to understand that I took time out to register for this site just to post a review about this movie. Registering for site like this is something I don't do. But I had ti warn anyone who plans on watching this movie........PLEASE DON'T!!!! I am not going to discuss the story because I might accidentally make it sound better than it is. Save yourself, Avoid!!!

(2008) Four Dragons (In Chinese with English subtitles) HISTORICAL ACTION

Don't be fooled by the title of this film because their isn't very much martial arts at all, and when they do it , it's not very good. A period piece film focusing on the mistreatment of Chinese workers working as slave labors as they're struggling for equal treatment and equal pay as the person is charge is corrupt blah, blah , blah. What this film fails to showcase is that with all that slave work, how did any of the workers ever find the time to practice martial arts as workers are punished if they go past camp. Instead of using fake blood, it's being replaced by fake cheesy CGI, and it was at this point, I pretty much used the fast forward button while playing it's all routinely predictable when you know how it's going to happen. 1 star out of 4 for the photographed scenery which is what Chinese films usually center much of their movies on.