CinemaSerf

Dec 22, 2023

6.0

When a wealthy man is found in a pool of his own blood with his wife sitting beside him, dagger in hand, it doesn't take "Poirot" to put two and two together. She (Janine Chun-NIng) naturally protests her innocence and for some reason a policeman (Greg Han Hsu) decides to explore her postulations. As it turns out, she's been involved with some quite unsavoury sorts over the years; her husband wasn't exactly scrupulous, and there is the corpse of an innocent man to be found here too. Moreover, it also starts to be come clear that the policeman is not averse to a bit of bribery and corruption either. Can she clear her name? Is she even guilty? What about the dodgy cop? It's actually not a bad premiss this - lots of greed, avarice, manipulation; but the acting is not very good and there's a relentless stream of dialogue that (admittedly via subtitles) starts to rob the thriller of, well, thrills! The complexities of the plot are over-played and repeated to illustrate the possible permutations of the crimes just once too often, and the denouement - which the observant amongst us might just have anticipated - is all just a little too implausibly convenient. It's a decent whodunit, but not one I expect to remember.