“Death Notice” Theatrical Poster
Director: Herman Yau
Cast: Julian Cheung, Louis Koo, Waise Lee, Francis Ng, Simon Yam, Myolie Wu, Chrissie Chau Sau-Na, Pakho Chau, Helena Law Lan, Ray Lui Leung-Wai
Running Time: 100 min.
By Paul Bramhall
Herman Yau is something of an anomaly when it comes to Hong Kong filmmakers. Having made his directorial debut in 1987 and rose to prominence during the 1990’s, he’s the only filmmaker who continues to be just as active in the 2020’s as he was 3 decades prior. 2023 was Yau’s busiest year since 2017, matching it for the number of productions he directed with a total of 4, encompassing Moscow Mission, Raid on the Lethal Zone, The White Storm 3: Heave or Hell, and Death Notice. The latter is an adaptation of a novel by Zhou Haohui, and is one of the last Hong Kong productions to be released that was subjected to multiple delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, having wrapped filming way back in 2018.
Death Notice opens in 2009 with a cop played by Julian Cheung (The First 7th Night, Martial Angels) receiving a panicked call from his fiancé, revealing that both she and his partner have been captured and strapped to a bomb which is set to explode. After some “which wire should I cut?” tension, Cheung is unable to stop the bomb from going off, resulting in two of the closest people he holds dear being incinerated beyond all recognition. The culprit was a mysterious serial killer called Darker who fashions himself as a vigilante, providing his victims with a death notice card to let them know the date he intends to perform their “execution”. Ten years later and Darker has fallen quiet and remains uncaptured, however when he reemerges to kill a former cop turned property businessman (played by a cameoing Waise Lee), Cheung becomes determined to take him down once and for all.
It becomes clear pretty quickly that Death Notice is going to be a somewhat hokey affair. The first sign being when Darker interrupts a press conference the cops are holding by hacking into the monitors, delivering a distorted voice spiel declaring himself as the sword of justice, and warning that more death notices can expect to be served. Francis Ng (Shamo, Wind Blast) is assigned to head up a task force to find Darker, and while Cheung has been in a desk job for the last 10 years due to being considered mentally unstable, he finds himself assigned to the team thanks to some persuasion from the chief superintendent (played by Simon Yam, clocking in another one of his 10 minutes screentime superintendent roles that seem to dominate his filmography recently!). As more death notices begin to be served, it becomes a race against time to uncover Darker’s identity before he can kill anyone else.
While on the surface Death Notice feels like it has all the ingredients for one of Yau’s big budget action spectacles he’s become increasingly known for since the late 2010’s, with the likes of the Shock Wave movies and the The White Storm sequels, in reality it’s a much more low-key affair. This is likely down to the timing of when it was filmed, with Shock Wave having only come out the year prior in 2017, the result being that the tone and feel here is much closer to some of the smaller crime thrillers that Yau helmed during the 2000’s (think the likes of On the Edge and Turning Point). However there’s also an undeniably workman like approach to the material that some of Yau’s latter-day titles suffer from, bringing to mind more regrettable efforts like 2018’s The Leakers (which also starred Francis Ng and Julien Cheung) rather than comparisons to his better work in the director’s chair.
However Yau has an ace up his sleeve in the form of action director Jack Wong, who offers up some of Death Notice’s more entertaining sequences. Yau first worked with Wong when he was an assistant action choreographer for Nicky Li on 2006’s The Wild Ninja, going on to become one of Yau’s go-to action directors in the 2010’s, working with him on 2015’s Sara, 2016’s The Mobfathers, and the previously mentioned The Leakers. While for the most part Death Notice plays out as a crime thriller, an early chase sequence sees Cheung pursuing the hooded Darker across the rooftops of Hong Kong, and if there’s any city in the world which lends itself to rooftop chase sequences, it’s Hong Kong. It’s a franticly filmed highlight that incorporates moments of first-person perspective to show it was done for real, proving to be one of the standout sequences when it comes to recent Hong Kong action cinema moments.
While watching Yau’s latest I couldn’t help but notice the similarities to Wai Ka-Fai’s Mad Detective and its spiritual sequel Detective vs. Sleuths, particularly around how Cheung’s character shares similar traits with Lau Ching-Wan’s off-kilter detective. Like Ching-Wan in Mad Detective, Cheung continues to have visions of his wife in the present day, here played by Myolie Wu (Death Stranding, Dearest Anita). Turning up to offer comfort and even advice on solving the case, her presence seems to be one that offers hope to Cheung so that he can let her go and move on, and is also the reason why he’s considered unfit for active duty. Likewise for the whole concept of a vigilante sending their target a notification of their impending downfall, which feels lifted straight from Detective vs. Sleuths (despite being filmed after), where a group of vigilantes dished out justice to those they felt had gotten away with it.
Of course as with any Hong Kong production in recent years, the omnipresent Louis Koo (Warriors of Future, Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In) is present and accounted for. Here Koo plays a badly scarred homeless man, the only person who was witness to the bomb going off that killed Cheung’s fiancé, and who also had the misfortune of getting caught in the blast. Living in a ramshackle dwelling and requiring a voice modulator to communicate, the main issue with a star of Koo’s stature being cast in such a minor role (and one that’s apparently worthy of sharing major face time on the poster along with Cheung and Ng at that!), is that it inevitably gives him away as a character who has a much larger role in the plot. Thankfully the inevitable reveal that proves Koo is more than just a downtrodden vagrant is one that, while expected, still manages to surprise when it comes down to the how and why of his role in the grand scheme of things.
Most importantly, it does so in the most ridiculous way possible, essentially involving the final 20 minutes of Death Notice having Cheung deliver an almost breathless dump of exposition that transitions across multiple scenes. Even when we end up in the airport set finale (one of two HK movies from 2023 to choose the airport as the setting for its finale, the other being Death Stranding), Cheung still finds ways to keep talking in the midst of clambering over stacked boxes and smashing people through mirrors. Despite all the explanatory exposition, we are still graced with the classic line of “You’re nothing but a real estate lackey.” The fact that the explanation is so out there, clearly taking a page from the Murderer playbook, only serves to make the absurdity of it all stand out even more.
Essentially the mystery all comes down to a phone charger and a few pebbles, throw in a dose of Face/Off, and finally a groan inducing realisation that the only reason why the opening was set in 2009 was because it had to be before smart phones were capable of syncing themselves to the correct time automatically. I’m still unable to tell if the gargantuan explanatory exposition dumps that many HK crime thrillers conclude with in recent years are to do with making it crystal clear to the Mainland censors of why the cops couldn’t have solved the mystery any earlier than they did, or if it’s just plain lazy filmmaking. Either way, by the time Cheung finishes rambling you’ll have been given a step-by-step explanation as to why everything went down the way it did, and I’m sure you could probably even send in questions if you have any and he’d happily answer them.
Somewhat hilariously Death Notice has the audacity to throw in a post-credits sequence hinting at a sequel, which I feel inclined to say we’ll likely never see, but then after watching 2014’s Z Storm I also thought we wouldn’t get any further instalments, so what do I know? For Herman Yau completists only, and probably those who are keen to see how an adaptation of the novel turned out for the big screen.
Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 5/10
I felt like this is one of them films that would have worked better as mini series on streaming services as there is just so much they pile on especially near the end that you almost have to take notes to keep track of what is what.
Also that post credit scene left me both busting a gut and peeved at the same time hahaha.
I tried watching this, but after 20 minutes I put it on pause to read this review. After finishing the review, I stopped watching completely.
From what I did see, I felt there was nothing at stake–unlike most Korean Cinema where I feel anything could happen. I guess this is what you get when everything has to go past the censors at the CCP.