Customer Reviews

Colour of the Truth

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Here we go again with another stick of Hong Kong dynamite. Undercover cop, Coke (Lau Ching Wan) and Triad Leader, Chiu (Francis Ng) are killed by good cop, Huang (Anthony Wong) in a bust gone bad. Years later, the sons of the dead men want revenge against Huang, who has become one of the best detectives on the force. Coke's son, 7-Up (Raymond Wong) is making a great name for himself as a smart young cop. Chiu's son, Wai (Jordan Chan) has surpassed his father and is the new king of the underworld. 7-Up eventually becomes a colleague of Huang and is torn between right and wrong. Wai, on the other hand, still wants Huang dead. Wong Jing and Marco Mak do a great job directing the all-star cast which also features Gillian Chung and the legendary Patrick Tse. If you are a HK action junkie like I am, you will definitely enjoy Colour Of The Truth.

Colour of the Truth may be pitched at the Infernal Affairs market, but it's a smart cop thriller with more than enough going for it to stand on its own merits. Years after his father (Lau Chin Wan) was shot by one of the other cops in his squad (Anthony Wong), a new recruit (Ho-Yin Wong) finds himself working for the same man. Keeping his own identity secret from his new boss, at first it's not any clearer whether he has another agenda - especially when approached by the son of the gangster who died alongside his father to take mutual revenge - than it is whether Wong is a good cop, a bad cop, the Devil in disguise or a social worker in a world where appearances can be fatally deceptive.

You know it's going to end as it started, with three men and a gun on a rooftop, but how it gets there is the fun. There are as many twists in the characters as there are in the plot, not least Wong's at once open and enigmatic protagonist with a mind like a filing cabinet (you even get to hear Wong talk in a Cockney accent at one point!) or Jordan Chan's second-generation gangster, a guy so smart he can beat three people at three different games blindfolded simultaneously - and does! - while even Chapman To's comic relief pays off more often than not. The action's not wanting either, particularly an ingenious shootout in Wong's wheelchair-bound father's apartment and a shootout seen via CCTV. If it's not always entirely believable it's put together with style, intelligence and imagination and makes for a particularly satisfying thriller.