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極度重犯 (1998)
The Suspect


Reviewed by: mrblue
Date: 09/17/2005

Louis Koo plays an assassin who wants to go straight after getting out of prison, so he turns down a job from his former employer Simon Yam to kill a politician. Yam carries out the hit himself and manages to frame Koo for the crime, who then must run from both the cops and criminals as he tries to clear his name.

The Suspect starts out well, with a high level of tension and some good action scenes. However, the second and much of the third act is wasted with overuse of political grandstanding and symbolism, which really grinds down the movie down. By the time the finale (which is actually pretty good) hit, I had lost most of my interest in the characters, and I'd wager you'd feel the same way. If Ringo Lam had managed to keep the story in check and pump up the action and suspense a bit, this could have been a really good movie in the vein of The Fugitive or Lam's previous film, Full Alert. As such, this is a good movie that gives a decent night's entertainment, but not much else.

[review from www.hkfilm.net]


Reviewed by: S.A. Winters
Date: 12/13/2002
Summary: Stick with it, the pay off is worth it!

For a Ringo Lam Movie I'm surprised there aren't more reviews. This is another movie I saw dubbed in English 2 years ago that I just bought the HK version of. SURPRISE! Most of the dialogue is in English. I'm not worldly enough as to know why this is.
Anyway even though most of this movie crawls along at a snails pace, I love it.
In a nutshell, after serving 12 years in prison Donny Lee is released. After being out for about 2 hours he's framed for killing a political contender and he's on the run.
I cared about Donny Lee from the beginning. Maybe because I hate politics and politicians and wanted to see the underdog screw the bigwigs in a big way. Boy, does the last half come on strong in a big way! What you think is a small story line gets (needlessly?)complicated real quick.
Thankfully before you know it Donny has some back up and the fireworks and showdowns begin. Good stuff.


Reviewed by: Sydneyguy
Date: 10/17/2001
Summary: ok ish

A movie which presents itself very well, giving you the idea it'll be a good crime/drama but the good beginning disappears into just a action movie.

Simon Yam who says he can't speak chinese in the movie, has poor english so that makes his characters very unconvincing!! The others play there roles well but there is not much to work with!!

6/10


Reviewed by: s****
Date: 06/10/2000

With all due respect to a technically well-made film, I found this movie totally boring. It reminded me more of Ringo Lam's least impressive earlier works, such as "Wild Search" or "School on Fire," where a somewhat compelling action-drama would become pretty tedious and dull after about 50 minutes. Many scenes in "The Suspect" that were obviously supposed to have great emotional resonance fell flat. I didn't particularly care about any of the characters. The cast was adequate, but the plot never really added up, and I never truly felt as if our protagonist were in any real danger; there is really isn't much of a case made against him as the assassin. The action scenes are okay, I guess, but without anything interesting behind them I found my attention wandering. Overall, I can think of worse ways to spend your time, but I was expecting something much greater and was highly disappointed by this film.


Reviewed by: ryan
Date: 10/25/1999
Summary: The Suspect (1998)

Don LEE (Louis KOO) was released after his 12 years' prison for killing an important guy. When he was released, Chan Hung asked him to kill the president candidate but he failed while his past partner Max MAK (Julian CHEUNG) did it. Everyone consider Don as the Suspect and Don tries his best to tell everyone the mastermind......

From the poster and the title, it seems that 'The Suspect' is something like Hollywood movie 'The Usual Suspects'. In fact, they have some points similiar as they are also playing a game in finding the real mastermind but in different focus and approach. 'The Suspect' is a movie with more action and you don't need to worry to think too much about the movie.

You may consider this movie like Ringo LAM's previous moive 'FULL ALERT' (1997). If you are, please don't put such assumptions or you'll be very uncomfortable. The reason is that 'The Suspect' is a movie taken from South East Asia, half of the dialogues are in English. There are only tiny elements about Hong Kong. I think it's more like 'The Adventurer' (1995).

On the whole, Ringo LAM has tried to put his efforts in action design and meanings behind the movie. You will find that some of the action scenes are really cool. You can find the action scenes which can only be filmed out of Hong kong. The pace for the whole movie is adequate.

For performance, I think Louis KOO and Julian CHEUNG has tried hard in playing their roles. The outlook of Julian as Max is really cool. For Ray LUI, I think it's also a good casting except that I think he has been stereotyped.

In terms of the plot, due to it's lack of Hong Kong elements, 'The Suspect' does not look like a Hong Kong movie. For the performance of the plot...... it's also similiar to 'The Adventurer'.

One point to add is that this movie is equipped with SR-D (Surround Dolby Digital) effects and it's effect is quite cool.