The Prosecutor Review: Donnie Yen Plays Lawyer Who Lets His Fists (And Legs) Do The Talking In Absurd But Action-Filled Legal Thriller

The Prosecutor  

Starring Donnie Yen, Julian Cheung, Francis Ng, Michael Hui

Directed by Donnie Yen

Donnie Yen fights bad guys in the streets, at a nightclub and in a subway train by the container load here.

“He is beating up a hundred people,” someone exclaims since the man really looks like he's whacking an entire horde in said nightclub battle.

Meanwhile, in far more civilised scenes in this nutty legal actioner, Ip Man also takes them down in the law courts as Lit Man.

Nutty because the lawman himself should be charged for engaging in utterly lawless mayhem as though it’s Law & Order: SCU (Special Crazy Unit). Including thrashing the subway train — guns, knives, broken glass, bones, train property — while duking it out with a cartoonish escapee from Terminator.

Gotta say — it's a great battle sequence staged by Yen’s stunt team.

And Lit Man as in law literature. The opening segment shows Yen go from superhero police officer Fok Chi Ho to a super-righteous legal zealot who gobbles up law books to transform into a single-minded bleeding-heart public prosecutor. With a massive conscience about gross injustice done to the poor people of Hong Kong. Okay, I have a real yen for Yen right now.

This prosecutor actually goes against his own already-closed case to prove the innocence of a man he’d convicted. The back-and-forth arguments in court between the earnest law enforcer and dirty defence lawyers with ulterior motives are a bit confusing with two defendants pitted against each other in a secret deal involving drug trafficking.

But also comical as Fok is unconventionally stubborn and occasionally scolds people in English (“You should know the law”, “Cut the bulls**t”). Aiding him is Yen’s pal from the Ip Man pics, Kent Cheng, as Bao Ding, a hangdog veteran who follows the cause when the sanctimonious new guy waxes about bringing an “eternal brilliant light” to justice. Heck, even my throat went tort. Sorry, taut.

And when Fok sees the rundown home of that innocent dude's old grandpa he slips in his own money to help him. Aw shucks.

Basically, Prosecutor Fok is the last good man in HK's Department Of Justice. Everyone around him — from Michael Hui as a callous judge to Francis Ng as his indifferent chief-prosecutor boss to a dope-sniffing law-exec slimeball (Julian Cheung) — seems to be coasting along the unfair system, breaking for lunch or breaking the law in league with ruthless drug lords. The criminals keep their noses clean by getting the drugs delivered to the homes of desperate people who need the money, lend their addresses and hence, take the fall.

“I want to guard the final door (of justice),” Fok, outraged by the wrongful abuse of defenceless innocents, tells his younger, more agile cop buddy, Ah Wai (singer-actor Cheung Tin Fu), about growing old and needing to go after bad guys in a different way.

“It's only a change of environment,” he quips. Yeah, sure.

What The Prosecutor, directed by Yen himself, really does, of course, is to put a new spin on an old deal. To be precise, a fancy new suit actually since this time, to add cerebral to primal, Yen fights baddies in a classy, uncreased gentleman’s outfit that's a great ad for refined menswear.

But the flick cannot, while lawyering up our hero, go totally NATO — no action, talk only.

So while Yen yaks a lifetime’s worth of pseudo-legalese here, he goes OTT — Over The Talk — to whack villains who look like they come out of a rogue's gallery in a comic book.

They are absurdly brutal. Even to their crooked-lawyer accomplices. But you really crack up when Fok whips out two long ice hockey sticks from the boot of his car from out of nowhere to clobber thugs who stash drugs in coconuts. Hey, this is a Hong Kong thriller, after all.

Now, this movie gets extra marks for two great face-offs.

Donnie Yen vs Michael Hui — are we having a Hui film fest here with The Last Dance too? — in the courtroom. And Lit Man Yen vs Lizard Man Francis Ng in a barmy physical entanglement in Fok's apartment.

“Should I give up my robe to give you to wear?” snooty judge Hui asks dogged irritant Yen in exasperation.

Hilarious. (3/5 stars) out in cinemas

Photo: Shaw Organisation