Naked truth about thriller

Despite a lurid title that sounds like a horror film parody, Nude Fear is a serious thriller with a psychological twist. As is the case with many Hong Kong films, it starts out strong but fails to follow through.

The theme has thought-provoking potential, focusing on a twenty something homicide officer forced to confront her innermost fear. The catalyst is the young woman's investigation of a grisly murder executed in exactly the same manner as the killing of her own mother two decades earlier.

Nude Fear's Chinese title, which translates as 'pursuing the murderer for 20 years', more accurately captures the theme, for the cop has been consciously and subconsciously pursuing her mother's killer for most of her life.

Kathy Chow Hoi-mei is given a change-of-pace role as policewoman Joyce Chan. The film opens with a flashback in which the eight-year-old Joyce comes home to find her mother's corpse.

Twenty years later, the emotionally detached officer is the police force's most efficient forensic specialist. The calm, clinical exterior belies a troubled psyche.

The apprehension of a depraved killer, Lee Chun-ming (Sam Lee Chan-sam), brings all of Joyce's dormant fears to the surface. The contents of Lee's refrigerator reveal he is hardly an advocate of healthy living, filled as it is with pickled human tongues.

Like Joyce's mother, the victims have had their tongues removed by their assassin. But Lee is much too young to have committed a crime 20 years earlier.