| Well-mounted cop-drama by Billy Chan that has a for once structured and layered screenplay backing up the production, courtesy of City On Fire writer Tommy Sham. In one of his better "Lee Sir" performances, Danny Lee is a cop surrounded with the age old struggle of trying to be a father and husband at the same time. His wife jenny (Carol Cheng) has seen his colleagues meet their fate one by one over the years and now mounts a campaign to get her husband to quit the dangerous job. She even goes as far as moving out in an instant, with their son. Meanwhile the hunt is on for a ruthless pair of Mainland criminals, a husband and wife unit played by Lam Wai (Long Arm Of The Law) and Pauline Wong (Her Vengeance)...
Effectively built up from that crucial point we enter from frame one, where Carol Cheng's Jenny makes the decision to want to stop worrying anymore, the script calls for dramatic situations within this relationship that very easily could've fallen into overdone territory but director Chan's performers are with the material and there's even clever structuring around mentioned familiarity. Perhaps the most striking element in that regard is the internal similarity between the couple on the wrong side and right side of the law. Aided by outbursts of violence and gore (most memorable being Pauline Wong's surgery on her own gun wound), you also get an in-tune score by Richard Yuen and moody cinematography that adds up to one of the more well-told genre pictures of its kind. Ken Lo, Wu Ma, Billy Lau and Shing Fui-On also appear while Kam Hang-Yin also makes the most of his brief role as a doctor forced to deliver the baby of Pauline's character. |
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