ReviewA Murder Erased movie review: Hong Kong detective mystery so abysmally conceived it has to be seen to be believed
- Dennis Law is a passionate filmmaker but he really can’t tell a story. This tale of an unsolved murder is full of absurd behaviour and bizarre shifts in tone
- Just as it appears to be building up to a clever conclusion Agatha Christie style, A Murder Erased lurches into a train wreck of a third act
1/5 stars
Still, viewers familiar with Law’s consistently lamentable oeuvre should be able to find just the ironic entertainment they have come to expect from the work of this very passionate yet incompetent filmmaker.
Law, a real estate developer turned hobbyist filmmaker, not only directs A Murder Erased but is the misguided project’s financier, producer and screenwriter.
The movie opens on a back-room meeting at Hong Kong’s Department of Justice, where police and lawyers are discussing how to prosecute a recently reopened cold case, in which the remains of a man have been found under a tenement staircase eight years after he was buried there.
The victim is the middle-aged Yung (Tony Ho Wah-chiu), remembered by former cohabitants of the subdivided flat where he lived as a vicious and despicable man who regularly abused his partner, Ping (Dada Chan Ching), and their young son.