DECEMBER 27 — What a surprise Christmas Eve viewing.
I’m rarely impressed with Donnie Yen’s material. Other than the Ip Man movies and the recent Raging Fire, I think Yen has made some absolutely mediocre crap recently (including the utterly forgettable Sakra).
So when I found myself laughing at the courtroom scenes here and even holding back tears at a few points, I almost had to slap myself and go, “Wait, is this real?! I’m laughing and almost crying at a Donnie Yen (!!) movie! This isn’t del Toro or Bong or Scott or what-not!”
All credit to Yen and his team.
They’ve come up with a reasonably complicated plot, written in some unpredictable twists (Yen as lawyer seemed awkward pre-film but he had me convinced!), choreographed some kick-ass action (the train fight scene is practically a tribute and almost an improvement to the fantastic bus scene in Bob Odenkirk’s Nobody) and overall delivered two hours of solid film-making.
The plot involves police Officer Fok (Yen) who gives up law enforcement to become a prosecutor in Hong Kong’s Department of Justice (DoJ), hoping to ensure that justice is served at the final “phase” of the law by putting the bad guys in jail (the earlier phase being to, uh, catch the bad guys).
But his first case involves a kid who’s a mere pawn in a drug-trafficking syndicate which opens his eyes to how even the DoJ can be helpless to expose the truth, punish the guilty and, of course, help the innocent.
Long and short, Fok takes matters into his own hands, pissing off the Chief Prosecutor (brilliant played by Francis Ng), and confounding both his co-counsel and the judge (handled superbly by veteran actors Kent Cheng and Michael Hui respectively) plus attracting some dangerous attention from the drug triads involved.
I can’t recall the last time I laughed so much at a courtroom scene, but Fok’s back-and-forth squabbles with his fellow adjudicators and lawyers had me in stitches.
Fans of pop star MC Cheung Tinfu get to see him performing some cool kungfu moves.
Speaking of kungfu, I don’t know if Yen did all his own stunts in this film but I have to say if he did even half, it’s mighty impressive especially coming from someone in his sixties.
It’s not said often enough just how good an anti-ageing role model Yen is; he stands together with the likes of Tom Cruise and JLo for whom age is almost a joke.
Even my kids who told me straight-up they didn’t like Chinese movies, came out of the cinema thoroughly impressed — no mean feat.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
