[KFCC] Justice , My Foot !

Story: Secretary Sung (Stephen Chow) retires from his court position after his son’s death, as he considers this a result of his crafty and unfair tactics in the courtroom. His wife runs into a pregnant woman whose brother has offered her up for marriage and then ran off with the money. As the man who he ripped off is chasing him, he falls off a cliff and the woman and her newborn son are left without family and under the care of Sung and his wife.

Now Sung is forced to break his vows and return out of retirement to lend his expert and ridiculous defense skills to this case, and uncover the true corruption within the officials.

Review: “Justice My Foot” is an interesting Stephen Chow film to say the least. Directed by the “love him or hate him” Johnnie To (whose typical style isn’t overtly noticeable in this film at all), it manages to be a fairly entertaining movie, despite that fact that it definitely isn’t uproariously funny.

The story is incredibly straightforward, but like most other films featuring Chow and his close-knit group the characters are what really take precedence over anything else. Chow’s character, Secretary Sung, is his usual blend of a charismatic lead with questionable habits. He is a very likable character with some strange practices in the courtroom. He uses any defense possible to win his case, no matter how unorthodox or even highly insignificant his evidence and witnesses are.

A great example is in the opening of the movie, when someone’s expensive imported dog bites a shopkeeper’s ass. The shopkeep shoos it away and the man demands reparations for his pricey lost dog. Of course, Chow sees this going on and sends his assistant to bite the angry man’s ass and run away. Afterwards, Chow claims he just scared his rare human counterpart away and demands money back for that, ultimately convincing the man to leave while he still can and forget his charges pressed against the store owner. It’s the way that he turns everything around in his favor that creates most of the film’s humor.

Ng Man Tat is the man that every Stephen Chow fan probably looks forward to seeing in his movies, as I consider them a truly dynamic duo. Unfortunately, almost all of his humor is relegated to fart jokes that fall flat. It seems like something you would see in a Disney movie, and this is coming from me, someone who would consider himself somewhat of a fart joke connoisseur, if not a pioneer in the competitive world of flatulence related comedy. Unfortunately, the majority of Ng “the man” Man Tat’s screen time is spent grimacing at the camera during egregiously long gas passes. Okay, it sounds way funnier when I explain it. Mental note: cast Ng Man Tat in a fully fart related film.

His character is a judge who rounds out a group of heinously corrupt officials that are bound to get their comeuppance by the films end. They are all exponentially dislikable as the ranks get higher, and they consistently put our hero Secretary Sung in a bind. This causes Chow to do numerous things in order to get around their scrutinizing eye, including dressing in drag at one point (the reasoning behind which is not nearly as humorous as the witnessing of).

As far as direction goes, not too much really sticks out. Johnnie To is either singled out for being an easily written off filmmaker or a stylish son of a gun who is to this day helping to keep some energy in the sagging HK film industry (and for the record, to clear any confusion I fall in the latter category). It’s too bad this 1992 effort lacks much of his cool sunglasses-for-everyone flavor, and falls more into a mixed grab bag of hit or miss humor and spots of decent action.

The aforementioned action (noted a mere 3 words prior to this parenthetical statement at that) is for the most part all done by Secretary Sung’s headstrong wife. Moderate use of wires and one notable pregnant fight make for some good attention getters, and complement the handful of genuinely funny scenes well.

All in all this film is neither an excellent adventure nor a bogus journey. It falls somewhere in the space between, far above Chow’s worst efforts, but huffing and puffing to catch up to his most side splitting comedies. It’s questionable whether I had more fun watching this movie than I did sprinkling Bill and Ted references in my review, but this is honestly worth watching for Chow fans, as you could do much worse.