Last Suspect Review: Zhang Xiaofei Shines As Lawyer-Mum In Crime Thriller By Zhang Yimou’s Daughter

Last Suspect (PG13)

Starring Zhang Xiaofei, Lee Hong-Chi, Kara Hui

Directed by Zhang Mo

This China flick about a hotshot lawyer trying desperately to free a murder suspect in court to save her kidnapped daughter is a remake of a 2007 Korean movie, Seven Days.

That pic was an urgent, edgier thriller zipping through twisty hoops. This version is like a brightly lit, straightforward — despite umpteen flashbacks — legal episode made for TV. A conventional, wrap-everything-up investigative mystery that’s intriguing but less challenging.

Plus, since Last Suspect is a PRC crime drama, lawbreakers must pay for their sins. Making it unambiguous.

Back then, the identity of the kidnapper was the biggest kicker. Same here.

Lawyer Vicky Chen (Hi, Mom’s Zhang Xiaofei), is famous for getting the seemingly guilty released in court as the “Queen of Reversing Verdicts”. “Suspects have rights too,” she advocates.

After she runs a relay race at a sports event at her daughter’s school, her kid suddenly goes missing. The legal eagle turns into a jittery wreck as she receives instructions via mobile phone from a sinister man who knows her every move.

She must free a possibly innocent man, Daniel Cek Khas, accused of brutally murdering a female sculptor, in a court trial within five days or her child dies. Her only ally is her good pal, Kim (Long Day’s Journey Into Night’s Lee Hong-Chi), an alcoholic bad-boy cop suspended for police brutality, who’s here for odd-couple contrast. She goes high, he digs low.

In the K-flick, he’s criminal-underworld savvy in a significant role. Here, the dude looks like an unwashed stuntman hired for action sequences. How does a smart cop not sniff out instantly his best friend is in trouble when she hides her predicament from him? 

So, Last Suspect depends largely on Zhang’s effective emotional heft as a distressed mum who meets another agonised parent in veteran Kara Hui (My People, My Country) playing Mrs Lin, the murdered girl’s mother.

Their mutual anguish together are the best scenes with Chen probing for leads and Lin expressing unrelenting pain. “Being a mother means we have vulnerabilities, but we also have armour,” Lin expounds.        

It touches your inner Iron Man — or Woman — as the lawyer-mum, racing against time to find a missing murder weapon and a mystery man named Jimmy Ahmad, discovers her case leading to a cover-up by a high official.  

Which explains why this film has foreign-named characters and people speaking English since director Zhang Mo, daughter of Zhang Yimou, presumably made it appear international — the city is never identified — to get past Chinese censors.

She does make a vital addition, seen in a flashback, to the original story which establishes the fortitude of her main character in a forceful way.

It’s a show of motherly determination, with the lawyer breaking the law herself, that makes her version here seem maternally stronger. (3/5 stars)

Photos: Shaw Organisation