Summary
There’s a solid legal procedural/whodunnit at the heart of this slick Alan Mak production. Central performances are earnest and engaging, even if there are more flashbacks and cutaways than an animated sitcom.
Director Alan Mak will forever have legendary status for the Infernal Affairs saga, the cat-and-mouse series of films that inspired Martin Scorsese’s The Departed. In the last decade or so, he’s spanned genres from the period-set The Lost Bladesman to the action-crime film Extraordinary Mission. With THE PROCURATOR (检察风云), he follows the investigative drama Integrity with something in a similar vein.
First things first: the procurator of the title is a prosecutor, although the translated term goes all the way back to the Roman Empire as one who acts on behalf of others. In this context, it’s quite literally the prosecutorial team investigating the crime at hand. Although as the story unfolds, it could be argued that there is more than one proxy at play here.
When university professor Xia Wei (Likun Wang) is placed at the centre of a grisly crime, prosecutor Li Rui (Huang Jingyu) begins to investigate the case. Chen Xin (Bao Beier), a wealthy businessman, is implicated with some literally buried secrets. Yet the threatened Xia Wei keeps her mouth firmly shut, leading to her defense lawyer Tong Yuchen (Bai Baihe) to fight Li Rui in court.
Working from a script from Peng Zhao (TV’s Court Battle), Mak’s film spends a lot of time bouncing back and forth between the trial and the investigation. Trial work is clearly where Zhao is comfortable, although the editing could best be described as whiplash-inducing. This results in a deliberately non-linear narrative. At one point, there are so many flashbacks and cutaways, and a whole subplot involving an archeological dig, I wasn’t sure if I’d wandered into another film entirely.
Which might be the main barrier to truly connecting with this film. There are some fine performances here, especially from Operation Red Sea‘s Huang Jingyu (aka Johnny Huang) who carries much of the exploratory weight of the plot-driven story.
It’s a slick-looking affair as well. The second scene kicks things off with a drone shot of the city, and the rapid pace of the editing ensures lots of similar shots are in our future. From the courtroom to archeological digs and, of course, a library, there is some handsome photography here. (A sole exception is one of those flashbacks, a first-person POV sequence that looks like an outtake from a Prodigy video – or the weirdest episode of Peep Show yet). There’s even a brief bit of action in the climax, with a car chase and minor gunplay.
Even as the courtroom summation attempts to tie it all together, I have to admit I still wasn’t entirely sure about it all. Still, THE PROCURATOR is never anything less than entertaining, and could certainly be fleshed out into a series of films in the future.
2022 | China | DIRECTOR: Alan Mak | WRITER: Peng Zhao | CAST: Likun Wang, Huang Jingyu, Bao Beier, Bai Baihe | DISTRIBUTOR: China Lion (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 128 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 25 May 2022 (AUS)
