Anti-Corruption (1975)Ng See-yuen's trashy ripped-from-the-headlines Anti-Corruption kicks off with a disclaimer that any similarities to real people are purely unintentional. Nice touch, but instantly discredited when the words are placed over shots of the newspaper front pages about the Peter Fitzroy Gobdber corruption scandal. 1973 had seen Godber, Kowloon's Deputy District Commissioner, become the most highly-ranked cop charged with taking bribes and his immediate escape to England angered the population. Extradited to Hong Kong and put on trial soon afterwards, Godber became a key factor in the birth of the Independent Commission Against Corruption in 1974. The years after the ICAC's establishment saw the cleanup of the territory's police force, doing away with the deeply entrenched bribery Ng chose to cover in his movie. Peter Godber becomes Peter Gosper (Tony Probyn) in Ng's movie version of the events and much of his case is put up on the screen. But movie's the focus instead rests on one Taff Hunter (Bill Lake, credited as WL Lake and playing Ernest "Taffy" Hunt). Hunter shows up in Hong Kong on the same flight as Gosper and starts out as an idealistic cop. Hunter's penchant for actually doing his job and cracking cases quickly raises the ire of several colleagues and they woo him over to the dark side - a fate ex-cop mate Dave (Jim James) describes as inevitable if one hopes to survive on the force. Hunter soon adapts to dirty practices but the colony's anti-corruption authorities are stepping up action and preparing to cast their net. Despite Anti-Corruption's inherent historical significance - perhaps its primary appeal to today's viewers - the movie mostly comes across as a mildly entertaining low-grade cash-in with its ending a foregone conclusion. Performances are steeped in caricature and pushed to extremes: one crooked cop lives in a Kowloon Tong palace, another colleague lounges around with diamond buttons on his shirt and a syndicate of corrupt expat officers formally comes together in a gentleman's club dubbed Wan Lo Enterprise. Only two Chinese cops appear steadfast in clean principles while public calls for reform are represented with grainy protest footage of the real thing. Investigative action is surprisingly weak, with the lads from the Anti-Corruption Branch mostly seen slinking about in their car on Gosper's tail and scoring a bit of theme music. Repeated vehicles - the same Combi Van is parked at every roadblock; the bad guys all have the same Benz - hint at the budget. The Mandarin-language scope print screened at the Film Archive, courtesy of Ng, was a hopelessly faded one - a poor state of affairs given Anti-Corruption's 1975 box office success. |
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