Review | A Guilty Conscience movie review: Dayo Wong plays an acid-tongued lawyer in court drama showing Hong Kong filmmaking at its best
- Dayo Wong plays a defence lawyer who loses his first case; his client is convicted for killing her daughter and sentenced to 17 years, but something is afoot
- Director Jack Ng has come up with an utterly entertaining movie that intrigues from the very first scene and never lets up until the end
4.5/5 stars
The Hong Kong judicial system may have rapidly become unrecognisable to many observers in this post-national-security-law era, but the local cinema audience’s appetite to see legal justice being served in all its nail-biting, fist-clenching glory has grown larger than ever.
A thoroughly engrossing court drama that represents Hong Kong mainstream commercial filmmaking at its very finest, the directorial debut of long-time screenwriter Jack Ng Wai-lun, who also wrote the screenplay, features a rollicking turn by Wong as a barrister who relocates his moral compass to help a single mother framed for a killing.
The story opens in 2002, when acid-tongued lawyer Adrian Lam (Wong) is so frustrated by his lack of career progression as a magistrate that he has all but given up on maintaining his professionalism.