THE CONSTABLE (冲锋战警) DVD (2013)

SYNOPSIS: Lam Kwok Kuen, nearing retirement and raising a mentally challenged son by himself, is a police officer whose sole requirement on the job is oversee the department fleet. Despite this, he remains active in the front line of police service, putting his life on the line for the sake of others, his heroism bettering even the most seasoned professionals. He fights the bad guys, putting criminals behind bars, upholding the law at any cost, for as his adage proclaims, to live a day surmounts to pursuing justice relentlessly, whether life or death proceeds in its aftermath.

MOVIE REVIEW:

While megastar Jackie Chan has slowed down in the action department, veteran actor Simon Yam just a year younger than the latter seems eager to step into his shoes in this Dennis S.Y. Law directed The Constable.

Yam plays Kuen, a police vehicle commander working in the EU unit. He is an all-rounder, dedicated cop and a single parent to his mentally challenged son. With rising costs on the island, Kuen moves to nearby Shenzhen and hires Yen (Niu Mengmeng), a young lady who helms from a village to be the babysitter. Yen has a boyfriend, a crook by the name of Chow (Sam Lee) who is later roped in by a local thug (Ken Lo) to commit a robbery in HK.

Thus what is exactly Dennis Law brewing this time? A cop drama with a twist? A prolonged police recruitment reel? We have no idea. But the good thing is Law constantly puts Yam’s character in action. From the opening where a girl nearly gets sexually assaulted by a group of men dressed in whites to a gang fight in a public toilet to a case of counterfeit money to a hostage case in a restaurant and lastly the attempted bank robbery. Wow, Keung is like a supercop and he keeps bumping into crimes on the streets mostly while he is off-duty. To add to it, he eats cereal for breakfast and is good at cutting leeks and carrots too.

Scripting and directing are not Law’s stronger areas (we heard he is good in real estate though) and The Constable is filled with so much coincidences and mundane happenings that we gave up analyzing what’s exactly wrong with it. The action choreography by Nicky Li looks slipshod and the editing seriously needs more work. Still, Yam manages to keep everything going together with people liked Maggie Siu, Lam Suet and Nick NY as his subordinate.

Director Dennis Law actually belonged to a peculiar breed of filmmakers in Hong Kong. He finances, directs and mostly writes his own movies. The downside of things is his outputs are consistently awful. The Constable ends with a thoughtful note:

“To live a day surmounts to pursuing a purposeful life whether life or death proceeds in its aftermath”

Again, we can’t tell if Law has managed to spread his message across but The Constable is not as bad as his previous outings. For a Dennis Law movie, that amounts to a lot. 

SPECIAL FEATURES:

Just a Trailer. 

AUDIO/VISUAL:

The DVD comes with dual languages and just look visually cheap and serviceable for the small screen.

MOVIE RATING:

DVD RATING :

Review by Linus Tee