Worth: $12.50
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Cast:
Baihe Bai, Bei-Er Bao, Shaofeng Feng, Johnny Huang, Likun Wang, Qianyuan Wang
Intro:
… for those looking for a popcorn flick with all the relevant twists and turns, The Procurator will not disappoint.
For those not in the know, a ‘Procurator’ is a public prosecutor in the Supreme People’s Procuratorate of the People’s Republic of China, the country’s highest national agency responsible for legal prosecution. Essentially, the Procurator oversees the investigation and prosecution of crimes.
As you could imagine, a protagonist who acts both as the detective and the lawyer would set the stage for an epic crime-thriller.
Does The Procurator deliver on such promise?
Somewhat.
The film begins with the rape and subsequent suicide of a young history student. Her university professor, Xia Wei confronts the perpetrator and winds up finding herself culpable in his murder. Wei’s lack of memory of the crime allows for a deeper dive into her motives.
Enter the procurator, Li Rui. Rui is our charming untarnished hero, and he remains so throughout the film. His investigation into the crime leads down many paths, some of which seem redundant by the end. All the while, Rui’s unrequited love, Tong Yu Chen, is hired to be the defence lawyer in charge of thwarting the prosecution.
The answer lies in the murder weapon; an elegy stone stolen from the Tang Dynasty Empress Tomb some 20 years ago during an expedition that involved Wei, her husband, his brother and the perpetrator of the rape, Chen Xin.
Alan Mak’s (Infernal Affairs, Overheard) crime-thriller is perfectly enjoyable. As a veteran in the genre, Mak knows exactly how to keep his audience engaged. With twists and turns plotted at perfect intervals, he ensures that an audience whose attention span is ever stretched can keep up.
But it seems that an intuitive understanding and reliance on genre conventions may be working against Mak here.
For all its clean-cut storytelling, The Procurator can sometimes come across as convoluted for the sake of tension. Often, it is hard to see why certain narrative points are relevant while other aspects, like the Tang Dynasty Empress Tomb, add an exotic element without any substance.
The most evocative plot point, the initial rape, falls by the wayside within the first act, never to be talked of again.
Despite all of this, The Procurator keeps the audience engaged through sheer expertise.
Mak is a veteran of Hong Kong cinema. His biggest hit, Infernal Affairs, which he co-directed with Andrew Lau, was later adapted by Martin Scorsese into The Departed. He has since directed a slew of crime thrillers including the Overheard franchise and Extraordinary Mission.
There are connecting threads through each of his films that he falls back on in The Procurator, namely his fascination with police officers and detectives.
For crime-thriller aficionados, The Procurator may be somewhat trite, with an unhealthy dependence on genre tropes. However, the film is made for a large, mainstream audience, and for those looking for a popcorn flick with all the relevant twists and turns, The Procurator will not disappoint.
