After filmmaking duo Alex Man & Felix Chong's earlier successful
trilogies "Infernal Affairs" and Overheard 1-3 here's "Integrity"
and
just as the Overheard series it's a high finance thriller. This time
Alan Mak directed and wrote the film himself and his buddy Felix Chong
only co-produced the film. The actors were all great in "Integrity"
with fine performances from Nick Cheung, Karena Lam and from the
great Sean Lau Ching Wan, the actor legend, who starred in all of the
Overheard films.
The film is an OK thriller but ultimately is dragged down by the VERY
convoluted plot, what the heck happened at the end ?
King Chan (Sean Lau Ching Wan) is a chief investigator
at the Hong Kong ICAC, The Independent Commission against Corruption,
and
they are running a court-case against companies that they are suspecting
of doing smuggling of cigarettes, tax evasion and money
laundering. Their main witness is a whistleblower working as an accountant
in one of the companies, and he's Jack Hui (Nick Cheung).
But Jack flees to Sydney, Australia before the court hearing and the
ICAC has a week to find the missing witness.
King Chan's wife (and probably soon to be ex-wife as
they bicker all the time) Shirley Kong (Karena Lam) also works as a
chief investigator
at the ICAC and she goes to Sydney in pursuit of the unwilling witness.
Who's the puppet master behind it all and what interest does
Jack Hui have in it all, why did he offer the ICAC to be a witness ?
King and Jack have known each other since they were kids and in a flashback
scene we get to see them as students. The filmmakers did
not use young actors or makeup effects to do this but apparently CGI,
and it looked weird as they used some sort of filters to Lau Ching
Wan and Nick Cheung's faces, like a Tik Tok effect. I hope this will
not be the trend because it looked awful. Better to use young actors
for a flashback scene as this. Yes, the plot was very complicated and
i didn't like the ending, but probably it was to open for a sequel ?
The film was presented in anamorphic widescreen 2.35:1
with cantonese audio DTS 5.1 or DD 5.1 with english subtitles, region
3 DVD.
Extras: Making Of featurettes with no english subs, Trailer, Teaser
and a gallery