Clean My Name, Mr. Coroner!
-When a headless body is found in the trunk of his car, an undercover cop teams up with a coroner in order to clear his name.
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Keith Ko has a comfortable life living on his inheritance with his stable job as a police coroner, although the smell of formaldehyde in the morning isn’t helping his love life.
But when he arrives at work early to find that the autopsy of his dead policeman has already been carried out, he smells something else: corruption at the local cop shop. After five years deep undercover, Fred Cheung sets out to prove that the decapitated corpse in the boot of his car doesn’t belong to his partner Herman, taking refuge in the apartment of bargirl Ling and finding unlikely support from Ko. James Yuen’s action-comedy Clean My Name, Mr. Coroner! scores with the unlikely pairing of Nick Cheung as an experienced cop-on-the-run and Francis Ng as the square middle-class coroner who helps him prove his innocence. After over-the-top performances in The Duel and Conman in Tokyo, Cheung plays it relatively straight as Fred Cheung, but it’s Ng who steals the show as the no-life bureaucrat who becomes an unlikely fellow fugitive with his extensive collection of bow ties and concern for the heart condition of the corrupt cops he’s pointing a gun at. Old hand Ti Lung adds gravitas as Officer Lau. 2000 saw local filmmakers bringing a fresh perspective to the city of Hong Kong, with the mid-levels taking centre stage, from the exciting escalator chase of 2000 AD to the Soho pleasures of And I Hate You So and Lavender. Yuen doesn’t disappoint, capturing the geography of the city with impressive production design and exemplary use of location, especially in an exciting dash through Wanchai with Fred chased across streets and bounced off the odd car.
Stephen Cremin
Thanks to Far East Film Festival