Review | A Witness out of the Blue film review: Louis Cheung plays bumbling detective in offbeat Hong Kong murder mystery
- Director Fung Chih-chiang’s latest – and best – effort starring Louis Koo and Louis Cheung is part murder mystery, part police thriller and part Freudian psychodrama
- Despite a needlessly gimmicky marketing campaign involving a parrot, the film is a thoroughly entertaining experience for viewers
3.5/5 stars
Fung Chih-chiang has shown an aptitude for offbeat storytelling since his days as a screenwriter for the likes of Stephen Chow Sing-chi and Johnnie To Kei-fung.
A Witness out of the Blue, Fung’s fourth feature as a writer-director, proves to be his latest narrative experiment, with the part murder mystery, part police thriller and part Freudian psychodrama twisting the premise of a standard procedural into something resembling a surprise.
With his previous directing efforts – from a modern-day Western (The Bounty) to a showbiz satire ( The Midas Touch ) and a musical comedy ( Concerto of the Bully ) – Fung has hopped from one genre to the next in search of fresh perspectives for his stories. A Witness out of the Blue marks another step in that direction, spinning his ensemble cast in unexpected trajectories in the aftermath of a robbery and a follow-up murder.
Three months after Sean Wong (played by Louis Koo Tin-lok as an amoral enigma) orchestrated an armed robbery of a jewellery store that left several people dead, the wanted criminal becomes the prime suspect of a new murder case when one of his partners-in-crime is found dead in the industrial building where they’ve been hiding the loot. The only “witness” at the scene appears to be a talking parrot in the room.
On the case is senior police inspector Yip Sau-ching (Philip Keung Ho-man) and his comically incompetent associate Larry Lam (Louis Cheung Kai-chung). When Wong’s fellow robbers face deadly retribution one after another, however, Lam and his perky colleague Charmaine (Cherry Ngan Cheuk-ling) also begin to turn their suspicion from Wong to Yip and other people present at the scene of the earlier heist.