Genres collide! Actually, in The Prosecutor, they don’t. Two distinct species of movie live separate lives in this odd courtroom drama with martial arts action bolted on. Strangely, it works, because Donnie Yen, who stars and directs, has decided to keep them as separate entities – he gives us a bit of this and then a bit of that and doesn’t try too hard to make the two genres cohabit. Even so, those gear changes are awesomely noisy.
The story is based on the real case of Ma Ka-kin, a Hong Kong kid who took delivery of a parcel of cocaine at his house, not knowing what it was, and wound up – after having been badly advised by his lawyers to plead guilty – with a 23-year sentence for drug trafficking. The “plea bargain” deal his legal team had been touting clearly did not work out the way Ma had anticipated. It later turned out that one of Ma’s defence team has a criminal record as long as your arm.
Ma Ka-kin becomes Ma Ka-kit in this retelling. This fictional Ma winds up with an even longer sentence, 27 years, and his defence lawyer isn’t just a bad guy, he’s a drug baron who spent his time in jail studying law, with devastating consequences for Ma, it turns out.
But he hasn’t reckoned on Donnie Yen’s Fok Chi Ho, a seasoned cop who has decided late in his career to retrain as a lawyer and is now working for the Department of Justice. Sensing that an injustice has occurred in the sentencing of Ma, Fok does his best to disrupt the case – he’s the prosecutor not the defence, so this does not go down well with the judge – and when Ma eventually heads off to jail Fok decides to roll up his sleeves and get down to some old-style sleuthing.
This means action scenes, and they are good – well choreographed, inventive, beautifully carried out, often quite brutal (look out for that ball pein hammer). Donnie Yen may be now in his 60s but he’s lithe and moving well (which is more than you can say for his face, but hey) and the use of stunt doubles is almost seamless. The climactic fight sequence, shot on an underground train, is worth watching the movie for alone, if you like action. It’s clearly been watching the John Wick series, one of which Yen was in, though it’s closer to Nobody with its confined-spaces bloody fandango.
Fok is a slightly ludicrous character – crusader for justice, man of the people, decent guy from top to toe and all that. Fiercely admired by his loyal crew when he is a cop, he also builds a loyal following as a lawyer, particularly from his “pupil master” Bao Ding. He’s not so much a character as a cipher, Robin Hood in a three-piece suit.
The legal system in Hong Kong still runs with the trappings of the old British system. It’s adversarial and the barristers wear horsehair wigs and gowns. This figleaf allows Yen and writers Edward Wong to chuck a few criticisms about, as if this were a movie made in Brit-controlled Hong Kong, rather than in the Chinese Communist Party era.
In many ways The Prosecutor is a reminder of the great stuff coming out of HK in the 1990s – it’s shot bright and clean, with the skyscrapers of the city a shimmering backdrop.
That said, there are too many villains and the courtroom back and forth gets a bit bewildering at times. But the good far outweighs the bad and the actors are right for their roles – Kent Cheng as Fok’s clubbable pupil master, Francis Ng as the DoJ’s possibly bent chief prosecutor, Julian Cheung as the villainous but plausible lawman/druglord, Michael Hui as the exasperated judge and MC Cheung Tin-fu, a singer now edging into acting as Fok’s old right hand man. MC can act and he’s got the action moves so that bodes well. A bit more for Shirley Chan to do other than scowl as the druglord’s sidekick would have been good, though she is excellent at piss and vinegar.
TLDR: Donnie Yen does cerebral courtroom drama and physical martial arts in one movie. It shouldn’t work but it just does.
The Prosecutor – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
