A Guilty Conscience (2023)

"Adrian Lam" (Dayo Wong) is a magistrate who doesn't really care about his job. He gets a bit of a shock, though, when his new boss sends him back to the benches where he must, again, actually practice law. It's here, after a night on the booze, that he turns up to defend a woman charged with the negligent homicide of her young son. A combination of his laziness, incompetence and his hangover leaves this woman hung out to dry when one of the witnesses - from whom he didn't get a written deposition - changes his story. Off to jail she goes and into a maelstrom of despair goes he before the guilt starts to kick in, and he decides to get his act together. His co-defending counsel "Evelyn" from the original trial (Renci Yeung) and he decide to try and convince the convicted "Jolene" (Louise Wong) to let them work on an appeal and the remainder of this rather flat courtroom drama follows their efforts. It starts off quite entertainingly, with a bit of a tetchy dynamic between the lawyers and to be fair, Dayo Wong is quite proficient as the bored and rather indolent lawyer. Sadly, though, once the ship is all upright again, the story becomes one of rather predicable family intrigue and power-broking that exposes us to many from a supporting cast that are as unremarkable as the dialogue. The photography has something of a television feature to it and the denouement, though quite lively paced - well you can see that coming from space. At 2¼ hours it is also far too long with just not enough meat on the story to sustain it. Perhaps a more judiciously cut edit and a few fewer side-stories might have made it more of a watchable "Perry Mason" style drama, but as it is - I was a bit bored by the end.