THE PROSECUTOR (2024)
4 stars
Signature Entertainment. Digital 16th June. Blu ray 23rd June.
The film opens in 2017 with an exciting and thrilling police raid on an abandoned building. They are heavily armed and chasing a criminal gang. Much gunfire follows with our hero Fok Chi-ho some kind of super cop – but we knew that would be the case, as he is played by Donnie Yen. The sequence intercuts with the follow up court case (with Fok in a neck brace after he saved a fellow officer).
He is frustrated when the perpetrators get off on a technicality. So much so he leaves the police force to retrain as an attorney to join the Department of Justice in the hope he can make a difference, using his experience as a cop.
He gets his first case. Drugs are being brought in from Brazil via the postal service. A young man Ma Ka-kit (Mason Fung Ho-yeung) receives one such parcel. When the police turn up to arrest him, he claims he just lent his address out to receive the packages. It seems like a simple straightforward case.
However, Fok is perplexed when the young man’s legal counsel try to persuade him to take a guilty plea and seek leniency. Our neophyte lawyer isn’t happy about this, despite his role as prosecutor, and talks to one of his old cop buddies and learns about the young man’s background — and soon believes he has been setup as part of a larger drug trafficking operation. Can he do anything about it though or is the youngster facing a long stretch in prison for a crime he didn’t commit?
Yen both stars in and directs this courtroom drama – based on a true case – mixed in with the expected dynamically staged fight sequences. Despite being 61, he can still kick-ass with the best of them – perhaps this is a bid to show off his acting chops alongside his well known skills. It is rather more talky than most Yen films, and a touch melodramatic at times, with the director doing his best to make the courtroom scenes gripping – once the case concludes, things pick up, as the crusading lawyer tries his best to prove the verdict wrong.
Steve Kirkham
