In The Line Of Duty III

Duty And The Beast

In The Line Of Duty III 
aka Huang jia shi jie zhi III: 
Ci xiong da dao
Hong Kong 1988 Directed by Arthur Wong & Brandy Yuen
Eureka Masters Of Cinema Blu Ray Zone B

Wow... I relly liked  In The Line Of Duty III. If you’ve read my previous reviews of Yes, Madam (reviewed here) and Royal Warriors (reviewed here) you’ll know that these two are considered in their countries to be the first two installments of this franchise (but with different numbers to each depending on which territory you are watching)... and that none of these films has any linking narrative or characters whatsoever, as far as I can tell. So, yeah, it’s kinda complicated and I can’t make head or tail of it.

However, despite this one not having either Michelle Yeoh or Cynthia Rothrock in it, I thought this was the best of those particular three, at any rate. This one top lines Cynthia Khan (like the next in the series... where she plays a different character again, it would seem), in only her fourth movie, as a former police trainee. The opening sequence sees her as a uniformed, new copper on the streets who takes control of a dangerous situation with her sexy kung fu skills. Which allows her to be talent spotted by the head of the special section of the Hong Kong police and she’s recruited to help out her reluctant uncle (who heads that division, badly) to fight crime. Following on from her opening action scene, the credits roll (with an even more insane name for the movie, listing it as part three of an entirely different franchise I can’t even find existing anywhere) which kinda gets into early James Bond territory featuring a bunch of gals posing in stylised lighting. 

The posing ladies are then revealed to be part of a show at the opening of middleman villain Yamamoto’s jewellery show in Japan. Where two truly mercenary and dangerous thieves (working in cahoots with Yamamoto before he double crosses them), who are pretty much assassins, rob the show dry. They then kill a Japanese detective’s apprentice and, when he learns they are going to Hong Kong (to fence the jewels to buy arms for their precious Red Army), the detective, played by Hiroshi Fujioka, goes to Hong Kong and, kind of, teams up with Cynthia Khan’s character Rachel, as the two get into fights, chases, bullet battles, explosions and more kung fu mayhem than you can shake a big wooden stick at.

And it’s great. At some point I kinda twigged the film must have been the work of two directors but, when I found that I was right, it made less sense because both directors are Hong Kong directors. But the Japanese scenes involving just the Japanese thieves or the detective seem to have a much different stylistic sensibility than the other sequences. For instance, there’s actually a sex scene in this one between the two thieves and it really looks great in terms of lighting and choreography... but it feels like a different movie. Strangely, though, the two sensibilities seem to sit together adequately and the fight sequences are also well handled... especially with Cynthia Khan, who comes out pretty well in this. 

That being said, even some of those fight scenes seem to be a bit of a mixed blend at times. One moment she’s fighting with a bad guy in a corridor in an apartment building and she kicks him into another room. That room is big, spacious, with no furniture and is all lit in red... I mean, totally not something you would expect or have in real life but it makes a nice backdrop for hand to hand combat, for sure. 

The film is very serious and it does get kinda bleak in terms of both heroes and relatives getting killed off to fuel the ‘this time it’s personal’ aspect of the confrontations... and it’s certainly none the worse for it. That being said, there are also some additional scenes which seem to be in here purely to add comic interludes, which feature another police woman played by ‘comedy queen’ Sandra Kwan Yue Ng from the The Inspector Wears Skirts franchise. Again, another tonal shift to accommodate and, again, nothing which throws the movie too off balance in any way either. 

So, yeah,  In The Line Of Duty III  was a very positive slice of Hong Kong action cinema for me and I’m glad Eureka have brought this one out in a lovely Blu Ray transfer. One of the best of these movies I’ve seen so far.