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In the new action-infused legal drama, The Prosecutor, veteran martial artist Donnie Yen plays a passionate cop who joins the Department of Justice after deciding to leave the police force. He felt the legal system was allowing too many criminals to slip through its grips. The ‘prosecution never rests,’ quite literally is the mantra adopted by the cast. This drama, action and crime movie brings the attention to the violence enabled by the corruption within the ‘rule of law’ surrounding Hong Kong.
While Yen seems to be an effective leader in directing, action fans might be left disappointed unlike Francis Ng, Julian Cheung or competitor Michael Hui, who already made a name for themselves in the industry. The Prosecutor has the habit of mistaking the tower of politics that cover a Hong Kong blinded by Law and order and aims its audiences to submission, which explains its title.
The Prosecutor, which comes out in the United States today, feels custom-made for Yen, especially considering his career goals at broadening his dramatic range. The film focuses on Yen’s newly qualified prosecuter Fok Chi Ho, which is first and foremost a courtroom drama scripted by a regular Ip Man scribe Edmond Wong. Unlike many of his peers who grown accustomed to luxury, the film goes out of its way to depict him as a man of the people who takes the subway and eat in cheap cafes. While he is comfortable raising his fists instead of a point of order, he is, in this regard, competent but far from revelatory. However, he wisely chooses to surround himself with gregarious character players who are more than willing to elevate the material.
In the end, the city’s legal system is portrayed as a precious yet fragile institution in this mainstream entertainment which is a touch too polished. Even though there are a few impressive action beats sprinkled in throughout, they feel like afterthoughts added last minute after securing Yen’s involvement so it could be aligned with the expectations of his fanbase.
Yen appears to understand the constraints involving the 61-year-old lead actor with regards to the more physically challenging moments. In fact, a number of the performance set pieces do not focus on Fok at all. Rather, they focus on Cheung’s young cop Lee, who is an able-bodied officer who trained under the inspector and still actively engages in hand-to-hand combat with the bad elements.
The film captures Fok’s intense commitment to law enforcement with its blistering opening salvo. The intensity of focus does not deter attention from the camera’s glaze which hovers overhead throughout Fok’s high-paced, drug dealing bust. This style of shooting does more than capture Fok’s viewpoint. It allows the audience to partake in the experience in a visceral fashion, as if they were handling the controls in a first-person shooting game, and, more importantly, frees Yen from the burden of working in front of a camera.
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