Powerful Four


Director: David Lam
Year: 1992
Rating: 7.0
Damn, if ever a Hong Kong crime film needed a sequel this was it. Back in the 1990s that wasn't that unusual - Casino Raiders, Casino Tycoon, Lee Rock. It feels set up for one but instead two years later director David Lam produced First Shot which covers much of the same ground - corruption among the police in the 1950s and 60s till the government established the ICAC to crack down on the dishonest cops. In First Shot one honest cop (Ti Lung) fights against the entire dirty system. In this one there are no honest cops, everyone is on the take - but within that world some are more venal than others.  Some catch the bad guys but not all of them. If they are being paid off, they look the other way or even help out. This is acceptable. Every cop does it. The pay-offs filter down to those below the Sergeant Majors - sort of like trickle down economics. In Hong Kong at the time the rank of Sergeant Major was the highest a Chinese could attain. Only British could hold ranks above that. And some of them were crooked as well and knew what was going on below them.



All the Chinese in the force aspire to that rank - not because their pay was much higher - but because they were able to run, as the film puts it, profit centers. This is the story of four such policemen who rise to that rank and run the city. Princes of the City would be apt. And they are the good guys in this film. It begins though much later in their lives - Singapore 1989 and three of them are attending the funeral of the fourth. All retired now and seemingly in hiding since ICAC is also at the funeral looking for them. Then comes the flashback which takes up the remainder of the film - but never explains how we get to the beginning. In fact, it only feels about halfway there. I would have enjoyed seeing that continue because this is pretty good and you begin to have some affection for the foursome even if they are corrupt. It is corruption within limits.



The Powerful Four are Simon Yam, Danny Lee, Waise Lee and Kent Cheng, all stars back then. The film throws us right into the cesspool of bribes and favors. When No Head (Danny Lee) goes in search of a man who stole money from a friend, he messes up an opium den and is attacked and fights back - but he is scolded by his superiors, both Chinese and British (Mark King, who was in a number of HK films). They pay us bribes monthly - what were you thinking. Part of that goes to you. What were you thinking. The whole system is built on a foundation of bribes. Cunning Tiger (Simon Yam) is on the take too and in competition for a promotion to Sergeant-Major with No Head. Hung (Waise Lee) who gets no cool nickname is under No Head, while Fatty B (Kent Cheng) is in another area and has a wife, a mistress and a pretty servant (Yolinda Yan - Bullet in the Head) all living under the same roof. No Head falls in love with the servant who begins a singing career. Fatty B eventually gets brought into the story during a tea house shoot-out. 



When drug usage begins to shift from opium to heroin, the cops call a meeting. To discuss how to crack down on this new dangerous drug? No, to discuss how they have to organize it in order to get their share. No Head wants to move all the distribution to Ma Shan, but others complain that it is up hill and hopheads can't walk there. There is a crook among the crooks though (Vincent Wan) who wants more and is willing to kill off the cops and his fellow crooks to get it. There is a lot of solid action choreographed by Yuen Tak with a big shoot-out at the end. But best is just watching these four operate within the unofficially sanctioned system. They know who they can arrest and who they can't. Those they can, they go after with viciousness. One fellow (Frankie Chan Chi-leung) is caught, taken to a room outside the police headquarters and tortured by first pounding his feet, then bringing a block of ice in to freeze his "lychees" and finally putting firecrackers between his toes. By the end they are happily posing under a portrait of the Queen to get their promotions. They played the game right and got to the top.