Courtroom TKO
Debuting filmmaker Ho Cheuk-tin swings for the fences in his true crime thriller, but doesn’t quite clear them.
The Sparring Partner
Director: Ho Cheuk-tin • Writers: Frankie Tam, Oliver Yip, Vincent Leung
Starring: Yeung Wai-leun, Mak Pui-tung, Louisa So, Jan Lamb, Gloria Yip, Chu Pak-him, Michael Chow, David Siu, Harriet Yeung, Xenia Chong, Choi Tsz-ching, Brenda Chan, Armen Au
Hong Kong • 2hrs 15mins
Opens Hong Kong October 27 • III
Grade: C+
Remember this? In 2013, a guy convinced a buddy of his to help him murder his parents, Glory Chau and Moon Siu, allegedly for their flat, and in doing so went down in the annals of Hong Kong crime, mostly due to the grisly nature of the murders. Not only did these dudes slaughter the couple, they dismembered them and stored the body parts in Tupperware after dressing them up as char siu (still want that lunch box?). The main dude confessed – to a friend on WhatsApp in a pure genius move – and went to the clink after trial. The pal was acquitted.
The Sparring Partner | 正義迴廊 is the true crime movie version of that incident, one that demanded headlines for what seemed like ages. Naturally, given the true crime wave sweeping television and film worldwide, we’re getting a dramatisation. Lifting a page from Sidney Lumet’s 1957 courtroom drama classic 12 Angry Men and another from Herman Yau’s legendary Cat III thriller The Untold Story, first time director Ho Cheuk-tin attempts to hang a meditation on the often uncomfortable – or non-existent – relationship between crime, justice and truth on the framework of an exploitation thriller. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Mostly it presents the “facts” of the case like a lawyer presenting to a judge without making an argument we can agree (or disagree) with. There’s plenty of plot in The Sparring Partner; plenty of thematic material. But Ho layers on so many elements – defence versus defence, murderer against murderer, juror versus juror – that what should be a lean, focused legal and moral conundrum story becomes overstuffed melodrama.
That’s a lot of drama
In this interpretation of events, Henry Cheung (Yeung Wai-leun) is a moody, slightly introverted attitude case who’s too smart for his own good. We’re led to believe he doesn’t get on with his brother, and that he’s something of a slacker. He meets Angus Tong (theatre actor Mak Pui-tung, whose turn won him an acting prize from HKIFF) at a cattle call job interview. He dumps it based on Henry’s suggestion that the interviews are a dog-and-pony show, and they take off for noodles. Thing is Angus is a bit of an easy mark; a (possibly) mentally challenged loser and loner with few friends and fewer prospects. It doesn’t take much for Henry to nudge Angus towards murder – so says prosecutor Allen Chu (Michael Chow Man-kin, of the phantom Where the Wind Blows). Both men are arrested, and their lawyers (remember those?) take very different approaches: Cheung’s counsel, Wilson Ng (Jan Lamb Hoi-fung, Love off the Cuff) tries to play down Henry’s instigator role, while Angus’s lawyer, Carrie Yau (Louisa So Yuk-wah, Office), latches on to her client’s feeble mental acuity and argues he was manipulated by Henry. Through it all, the nine-person jury debates where the truth lies.
He really wants a flat
Admittedly, Ho goes down some clever stylistic roads in The Sparring Partner that do a fair bit to freshen up a seriously stale genre. Once the trial starts the film becomes less police procedural, and zeroes in on the legal process, chiefly through the jury that we sit with in the deliberation room. When they debate the right and wrong, DOP Joseph Leung Yau-Cheong’s camera pulls back into compositions that include defendants, defence, and jury, all throwing out conflicting concepts. We follow them into the claustrophobic apartment hallway that was the scene of the crime and so on. It’s a clever idea, but then Ho never makes a statement one way or the about what happened. By blurring the lines between the title characters Ho and writers Frankie Tam Kwong-yuen, Oliver Yip Wai-ping (who wrote producer Philip Yung’s Port of Call) and Vincent Leung Wing-hou go off the rails. Was Henry the puppet master? Was Angus truly a “fool” who got taken advantage of? Who deserves punishment here, and where does the responsibility for two senseless deaths lie? And can the law address that? A vaguely ambiguous ending only adds fuel to the mysterious fire. Open endings are fine in films that are structured as such. The Sparring Partner has all the hallmarks of a traditional narrative. Avoiding an answer is a bit of a cheat.
Which, also, only matters if you care about the central players. No matter how hard Fung Chi-hang’s dramatic score tells us A Big Moment is happening, Yeung is a bit too understated to leave a lasting impression; his wily psychopathy comes and goes. Mak, conversely, goes all in on his frankly histrionic performance as the hard luck Angus. He’s a little pudgy, maybe under-educated. Why this should translate as drooly, sweaty crybaby is anyone’s guess. Harriet Yeung Sze-man carries the day as Angus’s sister in a single scene where she testifies for him, and is truly heartbreaking. Frantic editing that muddies the waters and neuters the psychological momentum just as it gets started is the icing on the confusing cake. Ho’s got an eye for mood, but maybe he should have started with a less complicated crime. — DEK