The Four (Hong Kong, 2012)

Gordan Chan and Janet Chun's The Four is the first of a proposed trilogy of kung fu films adapted from the novels of Wen Rui-An. Gordan Chan's best films were in the mid 90's, Fist Of Legend and King Of Beggars. Janet Chun was one of the writers of John Woo's Bullet In The Head and she has been an assistant director on several recent blockbusters, including True Legend and CJ7. The cast features Anthony Wong, Colin Chou, Ronald Cheng and Deng Chao (the albino from Detective Dee). The buzz surrounding the film was that it was going to feature kung fu versus zombies. I had my hopes that we would see "Romero" zombies and it was hard to tell from the trailer. Instead the zombies are reanimated kung fu warriors controlled by needles in their heads. The heroes discover that they cannot defeat the zombies unless they hit them in the head hard enough to knock the needles out and then they promptly forget that nugget of information until 5 minutes into a fight with an army of the undead. The action is good and the zombies are henchmen/cannon fodder for the big boss, but I was hoping for kung fu versus flesh hungry zombies. They are currently filming the sequel.