Sixty-one-year-old martial arts legend Donnie Yen is probably not a spring hen anymore (even his Iron Monkey days are behind him), however the “Ip Man” star remains to be dedicated to preventing unhealthy guys with the perfect of them. Exhibit A: “The Prosecutor,” a strong style hybrid wherein Yen directs himself as a hero cop who decides to turn out to be Hong Kong’s most righteous lawyer with the intention to personally seal the cracks within the area’s authorized system. So begins the uncommon film that would precisely be described as a “bone-crunching courtroom thriller,” as Yen’s character adopts an uncommonly hands-on strategy to arguing his first massive case.
The primary nice filmic disappointment of 2025: He doesn’t beat anybody to loss of life with a gavel.
Anybody hoping for such wanton silliness is certain to be upset by the tonal compromise of Edmond Wong’s screenplay, which grafts some hokey-as-hell messaging concerning the “everlasting gentle of justice” onto a supposedly true story that explores the price of corruption for Hong Kong’s poorest residents. One scene would possibly discover Yen sporting a barrister’s wig as he shouts “my realized colleague!” (in English) at a flustered protection legal professional, whereas the following finds him warding off a squad of Triad goons with a hockey stick.
Staged by motion director Takahito Ôuchi, the satisfyingly concussive struggle sequences don’t undergo an excessive amount of for having to share the identical actuality as a very advanced authorized case (they’re extra beholden to the fact of Yen’s age, a lot because the years haven’t diminished his talent). However the case itself struggles to match the identical depth of the encircling chaos, and whereas the courtroom proceedings are shot with loads of gusto, Wong’s script is much too hurried and ham-fisted to help the extent of element it tries to pack into the trial, leading to a film that appears much more grounded when Yen is braining somebody with an ice bucket than it does when he’s giving an impassioned speech concerning the Division of Justice.
And Yen’s character of Fok Chi-ho definitely has purpose to criticize the system. As we see within the movie’s ballistic prologue, set eight years earlier than the remainder of the story, our man as soon as led a raid — weapons blazing — in opposition to a legal gang the cops had lifeless to rights, just for the unhealthy guys to slide by means of the courts because of an absence of laborious proof. The police are solely ready to take action a lot, and all the CGI-augmented ass-kicking on this planet isn’t sufficient to cease crime in its tracks (the movie eases off from the obviously digital trickery because it goes alongside, notably as its motion scales right down to a extra human degree that emphasizes fists over weapons). So Fok decides to change his riot protect for some regulation books, and a brief montage later he re-emerges because the oldest rookie on the Division of Justice, the place he instantly flips your entire court docket system on its head.
Regardless of being a prosecutor (the titular prosecutor), Fok determines that the defendant in his first case has been framed by a criminal offense syndicate, and — over the course of a protracted and spirited verbal sparring match that enables Yen to unleash his interior “Lincoln Lawyer” — decides to align himself with the poor child he was ostensibly supposed to place behind bars (Mason Fung as Ma Ka-kit). For sure, prioritizing precise justice over a rubber-stamped conviction doesn’t sit properly with the remainder of the authorized neighborhood, a few of whom have a vested curiosity in permitting Hong Kong’s precise drug smugglers to function unimpeded.
Most devious of all is likely to be the 2 attorneys employed to defend younger Ma (Julian Cheung and Shirley Chan), a generically evil duo who do every thing of their energy to remove their consumer — and anybody who would possibly testify on his behalf — earlier than Fok can prepare for a climactic retrial. The unhealthy information: The prosecutor could not survive lengthy sufficient to current his case. The excellent news: Whereas Fok and Yen have every discovered a distinct manner of fulfilling their function, neither considered one of them has forgotten how they used to get issues finished. And if which means taking up each side of the authorized course of (or working on each side of the digicam), then so be it.
To that time, “The Prosecutor” is probably finest loved because the meta story of an motion star who refuses to be aged out of his metier; at a time when the Hong Kong movie trade is likely to be anticipating much less of Yen, he’s actively discovering methods to ask extra of himself. His full-bodied dedication to this film creates a charismatic undercurrent all its personal, and whereas the varied obstacles and villains launched to Fok’s case vary from “positive” to “no matter” earlier than limply — and inevitably — doubling again to invoke the character’s earlier life as a cop, the film works as a result of Yen brings the identical grinning relish to the courtroom scenes as he does to, say, the brawl the place he takes on 20 totally different guys in the course of a rooftop bar.
And whereas Yen makes positive to acknowledge that he isn’t as younger as he was once, such admissions show needlessly self-effacing. Perhaps the digital trickery he leans on in the course of the opening skirmish is only a intelligent manner of decreasing the bar for the remainder of the film to return, however Yen remains to be an elite martial artist with a uncommon knack for combining balletic grace with brutal pressure. Positive, his foley results have by no means been louder (each punch feels like a golf membership swinging into the trunk of an oak tree), however Yen flings his physique round with super function, and he is aware of the way to mine actual enjoyable out of seemingly banal places. Even one thing as bland because the again of a cargo truck can flip into a visible playground inside the span of a single kick.
Audiences could also be dismayed to comprehend that the preventing would by no means spill into the courtroom (which, after all, is the place authorized justice should prevail ultimately), however the subway brawl on the best way to Ma’s retrial is greater than satisfying sufficient to simply accept this movie’s closing argument: Yen would slightly mete out justice on his personal phrases than give up to the rulings of a damaged system. If nothing else, “The Prosecutor” is difficult proof that the case in opposition to him being “too outdated for this shit” needs to be dismissed with prejudice.
Grade: B-
Properly Go USA will launch “The Prosecutor” in theaters on Friday, January 10.
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