Synopsis

The movie begins with a murder being commited with a piano wire, although the intended victim is not aware. The scene then shifts to an airplane where a Suen (Aaron Kwok) a well known policement is bringing in a witness extradited from Canada to testify at the money laundering trial of a Hong Kong business man Yui( Gallen Law). Suen's girlfriend suddenly disappeared 10 years previously, however he cannot stop looking for her, almost every person he sees takes on her likeness and it is obvious from the start that he is mentally unstable because of it. After leaving the airport the witness is killed by a contract killer, Coke( Daniel Wu). Coke, long ago had been responsible for the death of Suen's girlfriend and as a result cannot help being drawn to Suen. The scene shifts again to the home of Yui and his lawyer To (Ekin Cheng). To is confident that there is no case, especially now that the witness cannot testify.

Suen constantly frequents the morgue in the hope of finding his girlfriend, His friend phorensic scientist ( Eric Tsang) tries to advise him to let it go. Suen is determined to ensure Yui doesn't get away with his crimes and turns up at the courthouse to confront him. His aggression however is filmed by Yui's lawyer, who admonishes Suen as needing to know better as he is a cop.

As Suen starts to investigate the case he realizes that To's wife Amy looks exactly like his long lost girlfriend. Consumed by the possibility that it is her he starts to stalk To, watching his house.

Soon after this Yui's pop star son disappears. A freelance photographer had taken pictures the night of the disappearance, a mistake for which he ends up dead. Suen following the leads to the photographs comes across Coke in the appartment of the dead photographer. A chase begins culminating in a frenzied fight in a street market. Later however, Coke contacts Suen and gives him some pictures that place To at the scene of the disappearance also. He also admits that he had killed Suen's girlfriend.

To is a good lawyer, but he is tortured because he knows he is helping people who don't deserve it to escape imprisonment. His wife tries to urge him to give up criminal law and take less guiltridden cases. Her husband tells her that it isn't that simple and anyway, they need the income for their life style. His wife is worried and is seeing a psychiatrist for her own sanity. Suen manages to hear one of the tapes from her sessions and feels that she is not happy with To and in fact must be his long lost girlfriend.

Yui is convinced that another crooked business man is behind the disappearance of his son and decides to kill him. In the ensuing gun battle both of them are mortally wounded. To arrives on the scene ecstatic that they have done the killing themselves, saving him the trouble.

Suen who has been watching To's home sees him leave and follows him to the scene of the gun battle. Seeing his reaction he realizes that To is indeed the piano wire killer and confronts him. Also telling him that his wife is unhappy. To is stricken by this news and eventually attacks Suen. The following fist fight in the rain ends with Suen wrapping a piece of wire fencing around To's neck choking him.

At that moment Amy, To's wife arrives having seen Suen following her husband. Suen in his anguish thinks she is his girlfriend, she plays along to get him to relax his grip on her husband.Once this happens she pushes him Suen away immediately going to her husband To. Suen realizes that she isn't his girlfriend and his anguish is unconsolable. However, To is guilty of murder and as such is imprisoned, the final scenes show his wife returning home from visiting him. Suen takes over as a phorensic scientist in the morgue, while Coke and his agent ( Ning Jing) who have crossed and double crossed each other over their relationship finally end up killing each other on a container vessel on the ocean.

Review

The movie both begins and ends in the rain. The main characters ( Ekin, Aaron and Daniel)have many parallels and all of them have close secrets. The movie script was written by Ivy Ho, and while it is a complex story, it is too involved for a 90 minute film. The result is that the characters lack depth and many of the incidents are not developed properly. Benny Chan may not have been the best director for this film as he tends to prefer more action movies. There was plenty of action, but between it the anguished musings of the characters didn't work so well.

Aaron Kwok had by far the most screen time in this movie. He was easily as morose as he was in Stormriders. However there were far too many scenes of him crying, sitting in his car than were necessary. His obsession with his lost girlfriend bordered on insanity and his incessent bawling was irritating.

Ekin's portray of Lawyer To was well done, however he didn't have enough screen time to develop the character at all. It was difficult without being able to develop the character for him to show the conflict between his job and his sense of justice. A bedroom scene with his wife had to fill in all the details, and his final bringing to justice is implied rather than shown. In all his scenes with Gallen Law, he has an impassive expression, however the final fight scene in the rain with Aaron is reminiscent of Stormriders, his close to death choking was almost too realistic.

Angelica Lee is a fine actress, but again here didn't get enough screen time to show her skill. Her performance was disappointing and the character totally one dimensional. Daniel likewise never really gets the opportunity for us to see what this killer is all about. His relationship with his agent is bizarre to say the least and no real reason is given, except for the fact that Coke likes to do things his way. The demise of them both on the boat is the most unexplained event and the audience is left unsure of what transpired.

The divergence and convergence of the characters doesn't really work satisfactorily. The movie's ending is unclear and downright confusing. Benny Chan's action scenes as usual are full of excitement and mayhem, his usual trademarks, however he really wasn't able to make the drama of the inner feelings of these characters work. The fild may have worked better if it had been done in a style where the same events are seen through the eyes of each of the characters, but that may have meant three films instead of one. That said, the despite it's sometimes muddled plot the movie is enjoyable and exciting

The movie is distributed by Univeral and is available on both DVD and VCD. The DVD has both Chinese and English subtitles and also contains a second DVD with a directors commentary, making of, star profiles and a photo gallery.