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Asian cinema: Hong Kong film
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Julian Cheung (left) as police inspector Lo Fei and Louis Koo as the sole witness to an explosion that killed Lo’s fiancée and a fellow policeman in a still from “Death Notice” (category IIB, Cantonese), directed by Herman Yau. Francis Ng co-stars.
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Review | Death Notice movie review: twisty crime mystery a change of gear for Herman Yau, director of Hong Kong action blockbuster series Shock Wave and The White Storm

  • Louis Koo, Julian Cheung and Francis Ng star in Death Notice, a murder mystery that sees police hot in pursuit of a serial killer who re-emerges after a decade
  • While fast-paced and fun, the Herman Yau-directed film fumbles its last-minute reveals in a way that makes the whole experience feel a little empty
Asian cinema: Hong Kong film
Edmund Lee
Edmund Lee
Why you can trust SCMP

3/5 stars

Herman Yau Lai-to, a prolific Hong Kong director who has long impressed cinema lovers with a wide range of medium-sized productions, is no stranger to the lucrative tier of mega-budget action films – he directed Shock Wave 1 and 2, The White Storm 2 and 3.
His latest film, Death Notice, is closer to his 2018 thriller The Leakers in its smaller scale, its workmanlike execution and its chaotically thrilling tone than any of those recent blockbusters.
Yau’s new production – adapted by screenwriter Shum Sek-yin (Deception of the Novelist) from Zhou Haohui’s 2009 mystery novel Death Notice: The Darker – also stars several actors who appeared in The Leakers, from Julian Cheung Chi-lam and Francis Ng Chun-yu to Chrissie Chau Sau-na and Charmaine Sheh Sze-man.

Death Notice opens 10 years in the past, with a traumatic episode for police inspector Lo Fei (Cheung), who fails to save his fiancée (Myolie Wu Hang-yee) and a fellow officer (Danny Chan Kwok-kwan) from a deadly explosion planned by serial killer “Darker”.

When Darker re-emerges in the present and publicly names those he will “punish” because “the police and judiciary have failed” to do so, Lo is allowed to join the police task force – headed by chief superintendent Hon Ho (Ng) – handling the case.

Julian Cheung as police inspector Lo Fei and Myolie Wu as the fiancée he could not save from an explosion in a still from “Death Notice”.

Even with their protection, Darker’s targets almost always die at the time he has stated.

Yau’s affinity for frenetic genre entertainment proves a nice fit for this ambitiously twisty whodunit, which somehow finds time to also fit in a revenge plot involving relationship grievances and two previously unsolved cases of police misconduct.

The myriad illogical decisions made by characters along the way are casually glossed over by the densely plotted and furiously paced narrative.

Francis Ng as chief superintendent Hon Ho in a still from “Death Notice”.
While most characters here prove to be thinly sketched tools to move the story along, Louis Koo Tin-lok stands out in his decidedly offbeat role as the only survivor of the original explosion.

Playing a homeless person who was severely burned during that 10-year-old incident, Koo’s profanity-spewing witness is both the film’s best wild card and its only effective comic relief.

As is often the case in Yau’s films, social issues are woven into a pulp fantasy, from the police’s condemnation of vigilante justice to the triad-tinged real estate hegemony in Hong Kong’s rural areas.

Louis Koo in a still from “Death Notice”.

But a murder mystery ultimately lives by its flair for surprises, and Death Notice fumbles its last-minute reveals in such an unimaginative way that the whole experience feels a little empty.

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