Film Name: 毒舌律师 / A Guilty Conscience
Since its release in Hong Kong on the 30th of Lunar New Year, the Lunar New Year favourite “A Guilty Conscience” has been on a tear, with its cumulative box office now exceeding HK$90 million, a record for a Hong Kong-produced film in Hong Kong’s film history, and this performance continues to go up.
The film will be released in mainland China next weekend. After going to the screening two days ago, I can more or less understand why “A Guilty Conscience” is so popular:
The content of the story is enjoyable enough, the format is very “Hong Kong flavoured”, and most importantly, it is very close to the audience’s true feelings and echoes the public’s voice.
Any work that can become a phenomenon must reflect/strike a chord with common social sentiments in some way, and A Guilty Conscience touches on people’s desire for justice and righteousness.
[Friendly reminder: there will be spoilers below.]
The first layer of A Guilty Conscience is a contrasting and grounded “life story”.
Lin Liangshui, the protagonist, has the ability and the ideal, but has no fighting spirit and no moral character. When he was a judge, he couldn’t get promoted, he paralysed himself by groping the fish, and when he went to be a lawyer, he changed his face again, trying to learn from other people to hold the stinking feet of the rich and powerful, and he couldn’t do anything well, and the worse he lived – it is precisely this kind of person who is going to preside over the justice, and the audience will find it more and more interesting and nice to watch.
Huang Zihua is the biggest contributor to make Lin Liangshui’s character come alive. Although he has long since got rid of the scornful name of “box office poison”, the “bad, rotten and cheap” qualities he accumulated in and out of the theatre with “War of the Genders” and other films were a perfect match for Lin Liangshui’s cynical character. However, his “bad, rotten and cheap” qualities accumulated with “War of the Genders” and other on- and off-screen films are a perfect match for Lin Liangshui’s cynical character, and with his situation and state of affairs in recent years, it has a taste of a waterfall.
By the way, many of the characters in the film are well cast, including Ho Kai Wah’s loyal and witty Prince, Wang Dani’s bleak and sad Zeng Jie’er, Tse Kwan Ho’s calm and decent Jin Yuanshan, and Michael Wong’s old-fashioned and scummy Dong Weiguo, etc., all of which are cornerstones of the film’s success.
The second layer of the texture of A Guilty Conscience is the echoes of Hong Kong-style legal films and the lingering fireworks.
When Hong Kong dramas were popular, we all watched a few TVB legal dramas, and I also think of the film “The Truth” starring Andy Lau and Deanie Ip… These dramas may not be very professional in terms of the law, but the emotions between people must be touching and deep-rooted.
The same applies to the film. The main character, Tsang Kit Yee, is a “mistress” who has failed to fulfil her duty of guardianship over her daughter, and although we all know that she has been wronged, we do not have much sympathy for her at the beginning until the truth is revealed step by step, and only then do we gradually empathise with her and become filled with righteous indignation.
In addition, the film is very “Hong Kong style” inside and out. I watched the film in Cantonese, and I could feel the unique Hong Kong lifestyle (unfortunately, my knowledge is limited and I can’t experience more).
The third layer of flesh and blood in A Guilty Conscience is the fight for justice, the fight against the odds, and the fight against the odds.
The plot of the film is very clear, that is, a few people who have been wrongly accused, being counted, being implicated together, trying to do everything possible to remove all the difficulties to clear up the wrongs, the soothing comfort of helping the weak and the strong, the clarity of clearing up the wrongs, and the pain of lifting up the eyebrow, and so on are all included, and these emotions are the unchanging quest of the viewers.
At the same time, in the specific process of overturning the case, also mixed with the collusion between the government and business, black and white, criminal investigation and crime solving and many other elements of the genre, enriching the watchability, but also effectively assisted in the interpretation of the theme, is a plus point.
Up to this point, the merits of “A Guilty Conscience” have already been exhausted. In the final analysis, it is just a “cool” film on the subject of law and order with outstanding performance in all aspects, and is not an amazing masterpiece, so why is it so popular, and even become the top grossing film in Hong Kong?
This should be the last layer of “A Guilty Conscience”, i.e. people’s simple desire for heavenly justice.
Compared to Lin Liangshui, who is often out of shape, there is a character in the film that more clearly reflects the main idea, senior barrister Jin Yuanshan – when he learns that Lin Liangshui is exploiting loopholes to exclude other good lawyers from the court, he takes the initiative to act as the chief prosecutor, and he won’t allow Lin Liangshui to play tricks on the court. He would not allow “peer scum” like Lin Liangshui to play tricks, and he wanted to uphold the dignity of the law.
But after learning the facts of the case (how the lawsuit was decided is one thing, the truth is another), Jin Yuanshan is no longer willing to help the evil, but he still could not resist the pressure from all sides, had to go through the scene …… Eventually, there was a trial on the prosecution and defence lawyers hand in hand together to the real culprits of the magical scene of Zhong Jingyi to send a message.
A Guilty Conscience” has a subtext that is not explicitly stated, but is always in the body: the system is unreliable, the law is not fair, and you can’t do justice just by relying on a sense of justice.
If you think about it, Lin Liangshui on the one hand is really difficult to be trusted because of his unreliable image, but on the other hand, he did rely on a lot of “unorthodox” grey tactics in order to turn the tide.
“Zeng Jie’er’s murder of her daughter” is a hard case to overturn, coupled with the fact that under the influence of the real culprits, the Zhong family couple, the entire powerful class (the real power) are secretly obstructing the case, Lin Liangshui and Fang Jiajun, what do they take to fight? The answer is to use “unprofessional” to fight “unprofessional”, to fight evil with cleverness, to fight evil with poison.
Lin Liangshui is not an idealist with an empty sense of justice, he will use his emotions to guide the jury in the trial, to ask all kinds of “amateur” baiting questions, he has the same help in the black and white, his family’s social prince is his follower, in the Independent Commission Against Corruption, Lu Tingheng is his youngest friend, listening to the eavesdropping and secretly taking pictures of the tactics are no problem, and even the opponent to find an excuse to put him in jail for 48 hours. The excuse to imprison him for 48 hours, he finally also relied on faked suicide and money police officer’s affair to run out of ……
Because the system sucks, the opponents use the rules to bully people in a dignified manner, and in order to fight against it, people will acquiesce to Lin Liangshui’s lack of rules.
The climax of the last trial is the most gripping drama, the Zhong family “shielded” all the media and social figures, in addition to the gallant Zhong Nianhua on the gallery are all the Zhong family’s legal advisers, Dong Weiguo is in the witness box on the speech, to Lin Liangshui and other people riding face output, bullying atmosphere was pushed to the extreme point.
Because of this, Lin Liangshui in the reversal of some “redundant” accusations and ranting, will appear particularly powerful: “Before, everyone said that everyone is equal before the law, today, everyone has changed their mouths, said that before the law, three, six, nine and so on.”
We are not going to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of the differences between the civil law system and the law of the sea system, but only about the reality of why “A Guilty Conscience” will hit the hearts of thousands of Hong Kong people – the gap between the rich and the poor and the class barriers have caused too much suffering, and people yearn for the “road of the world for the public” type of justice. People yearn for justice in the form of “the way of the road is to be travelled, the world is to be fair”, and this yearning for and pursuit of justice is a moral righteousness that can break through the boundaries of regions and countries, and can be applied to all places in the world.
A Guilty Conscience” is based on the public sentiment in the ballast of the film, which starts with no heavenly reason and ends with heavenly reason.
Therefore, even if the new bottle of “Poisonous Tongue Big and Strong” is filled with old wine, it will not affect its flavour in the least, because it is in line with the greatest heavenly reason.
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