Directed by Donnie Yen
Donnie Yen is an international superstar and a very important figure in the Hong Kong action movie scene. American audiences may be far less familiar with his work, like me. While I’ve heard of him, I admit I’ve never seen the action films that made him famous, like the Ip Man and Monkey Man movies. Recently, American audiences may recognize him from his roles in John Wick 4 and Rogue One, two major franchise movies. Quite frankly he’s excellent in both and after watching his latest Hong Kong film, I really should make the effort to explore Yen’s work, and the praised work on the Hong Kong action scene in general. It’s a different style than I’m used to, but very engrossing and entertaining.
Yen plays Fok, a police officer turned prosecutor seeking the truth and justice in a corrupt system. When a promising young man gets caught up in a drug trafficking scheme by receiving an international package with drugs in it at the instruction of a friend, he falsely pleads guilty. The case is handled by Fok, but as prosecutor he has doubts to the young man’s guilt, risking both his career and life in the pursuit of justice against a corrupt system controlled by gangsters. Embroiled with a sketchy defense attorney (Julian Cheung Chi Lam), and helping the grandfather (Kong Lau) of the accused, Fok takes matters into his own hands with both brute force and cunning legal maneuvering.
The film opens with a rip-roaring action scene wherein the police, led by Fok, infiltrate a gang location to take down gun runners, and dropping us into such an intense and well executed action set piece really sets the table for the rest of the film. As mentioned, I am not an expert on the Hong Kong action film genre, I will readily admit it, but this scene is incredible and features some of the best staged and choregraphed action I’ve seen in some time. Yen is such a good physical actor, but credit to him and his team for the coordination and vision to shoot this scene in such a visionary, inventive manner. It’s very stylized and features elements of first person shooter video games as well as intense, slow motion 360 shots. It’s glorious and worth the price of admission. Now given this film is largely a legal drama where Yen plays a prosecutor, the action does not keep up, though there are a few additional fight scenes which are equally thrilling.
It is kind of a letdown that the film opens with such adrenaline and then settles mostly into a courtroom/lawyer drama, but the premise and machinations of the film come through as entertaining as well. I just can’t help but feel a little teased by the action scenes and wanting more of that though. The Prosecutor is a very idealized story wherein Yen harps on always doing the right thing. There are confounding scenes where Fok acts against his interest as prosecutor, seemingly defending the accused instead. At its heart, the message is clearly follow the truth, regardless of your role in the justice system, and it’s a noble one worth depicting in an otherwise very corrupt world. This applies just as much to America as it does Hong Kong. But it does sometimes result in narrative beats that ring false. Fok would have been taken off the case at the very least, and at worst fired from the Department of Justice, but that doesn’t serve the story and message Yen is hoping to impart upon the audience.
And that’s fine. With a movie like this, I can forgive this type of transgression or plot hole because the heart of the film is so strong, the action scenes offer Donnie Yen the platform to perform to his strength, and Yen is as magnetic and charismatic as you’d expect from a big star in his movie. The movie is fine, it’s entertaining enough an entry for January that it’d be an easy choice at the box office for fans of action above the other options coming out this month (Den of Thieves 2: Pantera potentially notwithstanding). The Prosecutor manages to whet the appetite in many ways. I need to seek out more Donnie Yen movies. I need to seek out more Hong Kong action movies. I need to seek out more international films this year than I have in the past. I need to seek out more action movies this year than I have in the past (if Hollywood manages to oblige, and maybe that’s the problem). But the main lesson from the film is this: Donnie Yen.
Corndog Chats 