6/10
Classic of Market Calculation - Review of "Hail the Judge"
22 January 2023
Warning: Spoilers
According to Wong Jing's marketing strategy, the middle-aged audience of the TV series "Justice Pao" (1993) and the teenagers of Stephen Chow Sing-Chi's fans were combined into one "Hail the Judge" (1994), and the two completely different audiences were captured in one go. Of course, judging from the box office figures, Wong Jing's strategy has indeed achieved some results, but it's still difficult to connect Stephen Chow and "Justice Pao". From this film co-produced by Wong Jing and Stephen Chow, the classification of Hong Kong audiences has reached a level that is quite close to meticulous. In the face of such drastic changes, the filmmakers seem to have been futile in trying to salvage this divisive situation, and this film can serve as the end of such attempts.

This film maintains the level of Stephen Chow's comedy, and the burst of laughs strikes, and the effect is as expected. The old story and the formula, the audience is not surprised, they just focused on watching Stephen Chow to make them laugh, and Stephen Chow really tried his best to not deceive. Among them, in the court, the scene of the tribunal of the three divisions is an excellent performance by Stephen Chow since "Justice, My Foot!" (1992). Although the film as a whole has many flaws, it does not hinder the popularity of the film.

The film centers on Pao Lung-Sing, played by Stephen Chow, who is ignorant and just wants to use money to buy a petty bureaucrat to survive, but encountered the massacre of Chik's family, suffered persecution, and lived in a brothel in the capital, and finally succeeded in turning over. In the casting, Wong Jing and Stephen Chow have a lot of magic strokes. Among them, Ng Wui and Ha Ping play Pao Lung Sing's parents, Collin Chou plays the villain Shang Wei, Yuen King-Tan plays Madam of a brothel, and Lawrence Ng Kai-Wah plays Fong Tong-Kan. Elvis Tsui Kam-Kong plays Panther, and Lau Shun plays Li Lin-Ying, all of them are unique and unforgettable. The two borrowed the words of Pao Lung-Sing's father to say that being an honest official is more wicked than a corrupt official, so that honest official can deal with a corrupt official. This element will also appear from time to time in Wong Jing and Stephen Chow's later films.

By Kam Po LAM (original in Chinese)
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