THE PROSECUTOR - Mark Reviews Movies

The Prosecutor, Well Go USA

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | January 9, 2025

Like all action stars, Donnie Yen's time for doing on-screen fighting and stunts will eventually end, and The Prosecutor, which Yen also directed, suggests the star could have a fine career when that time does arrive. Thankfully, it hasn't yet, as the various action scenes of this clever hybrid film prove, but the actor might have found a role and material that could serve him for years to come.

Here's hoping we get more of Yen's Fok Chi-ho, a retired police detective who has firsthand experience with the flaws and shortcomings of the justice system in Hong Kong. After being injured on the job while saving a fellow officer from almost-certain death at the hands of a drug kingpin, Fok watches as the man who almost killed him is acquitted in court. The reason the man goes free amounts to various technicalities and failings on the part of the police, including Fok himself, so if he wants to make an actual difference and ensure that justice is enacted, he had better get closer to the courtroom.

This may make Edmond Wong's screenplay sound like a certain type of critique of the justice system—one that sees the cops as the be-all and end-all of the process or the rules of the court as some trick to allow guilty people to go free. It's not that at all, however, because Fok, who spends seven years studying law and becoming a prosecutor in Hong Kong's Department of Justice, is a smarter, wiser man than that.

His goal is to get at the truth. That's his only mission, even if, as the case at the heart of this story shows, it means that he ends up proving his former colleagues in the police—not to mention his new prosecutorial co-workers—wrong, too hasty to arrest and charge a suspect, and slightly disinterested in seeing the bigger picture of what actual justice looks like.

Fok, then, comes from a long line of righteous, idealistic, and admirable lawyers in fiction, and indeed, sections of Wong screenplay feels as if they could have been adapted from one of those legal thrillers that lined the shelves of bookshops during the 1990s. Fok gets a case, his first official one as a prosecutor, that makes him question the system even more than he already has, take it upon himself to investigate the crime and help one of the men he has been charged with prosecuting, and teach everyone a lesson about not allowing the letter of law dictate the more vital spirit of it.

Oh, Fok also gets to beat up a lot of people, too, in a string of fight sequences that somehow fit reasonably well into the detective yarn and courtroom drama of the rest of the film. It's never the man's choice, of course, because he has theoretically put his days of literally fighting crime behind him. Because it's Yen—one of our best action stars working today—in the role, it's basically a given that his character will find himself punching, kicking, and otherwise pummeling groups of bad guys as the story unfolds.

We buy the apparent contradictions of this narrative concoction, though, because it is Yen at its center. He's a skilled and talented martial artist, obviously, as his decades in the international movie industry have shown time and time again. Yen is also a consummately charming performer, and his disarming charisma is perfectly suited to a character who becomes a rebellious attorney in the courtroom and the moral center of a legal drama.

The plot sees Fok's newly appointed prosecutor assigned to the case of two young men accused of trafficking drugs from overseas. From the start, Fok isn't certain that Ka-kit (Mason Fung), who received narcotics in the mail from overseas, is actually guilty of anything, apart from living in impoverished conditions with his grandfather Ma (Lau Kong) and being naïve enough to trust a drug dealer named Kwok-wing (Locker Lam). Fok becomes especially suspicious when Ka-kit pleads guilty to drug smuggling under the counsel of a pair of lawyers whose advice would result in the charges against Kwok-wing being dropped.

There's a massive conspiracy afoot, in other words, involving a drug lord named Au Pak-man (Julian Cheung), who learned the law while in prison and now uses his knowledge to evade it. The last thing he or anyone else in the enterprise expects, of course, is that a rookie prosecutor would risk his career, his reputation, and his life to help a young man about whom no one else cares.

There are essentially three major conflicts in this tale. The first revolves around the legal proceedings, which are communicated well by Wong's script and Yen's direction, while featuring plenty of fine courtroom theatrics—from Fok questioning the judge (played by Michael Hui) to him treating his own witness in a hostile fashion. The second has Fok confronting and trying to convince his colleagues in the Department of the Justice, including Kent Cheng's Bao Ding, who a long-time department veteran who serves as an in-house teacher for newbies, and Francis Ng's Yeung Tit-lap, the chief prosecutor who only sees his job as one ensuring a high percentage of convictions.

The third, then, is the action, choreographed by Yen and his team, as Fok has to take on Au's relentless thugs and henchmen in the streets, on the balcony of a club on a higher floor of a skyscraper, and in a speeding subway car. They're exciting and occasionally brutal brawls, and while The Prosecutor doesn't need them to succeed, the fights do make this a uniquely entertaining legal thriller.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products