Ho (Louis Koo) runs a perfect organisation, he and his team offer
contract killings to interested parties that are so carefully orchestrated
that they are practically indistinguishable from accidents for the
untrained eye. For this, he and his little team (Fung Shui-Fan, Michelle
Ye, Lam Suet) have to do perfect work though - which they usually do, but
at their latest job which involves a wheelchair-bound victim, a kite,
balloons, the tramway and rain, something goes wrong, and what at first
looks like nothing more than a minor slipup turns into a big bus accident
that kills Fattie (Lam Suet) and almost costs Ho's life as well. For Ho,
this accident looks just too accidental to be the real deal, so he
suspects foul play, and when he looks for a traitor in his own ranks, he
finds out that Unlce (Fung Shui-Fan) is suffering from Altzheimer's (but
tries to hide it by all means) while the gang's female member seems to be
actually involved in some foul play, which is why Ho kills her. However,
the decisive question is, who's behind the whole affair, and soon enough,
Ho figures it has to be insurance investigator Chan (Richie Ren), who is
somehow in league with Ho's last client - and to find out more about Chan,
Ho bugs his apartment, rents the apartment beneath him, and puts him under
heavy surveillance. When his partner in crime, Ho's last client, dies in
what appears to be suicide and Uncle throws himself out of a window and is
hospitalized, that's all the proof that Ho needs for Chan's guilt, and he
stages another elaborate accident, of which the wheels are already set in
motion when Ho receives a call from Uncle who confesses to him that
Fattie's death was actually his fault, and it was really nothing but an
accident - but thanks to his Altzheimer's he has only now remembered. Ho
tries desperately to stop the wheels he has already set into motion, as
Chan had nothing to do with wahtever happened to Chan whatsoever, but it's
too late, and all he manages to accomplish is to have Chan's wife (Han
Yuqin) killed in his stead. The whole story leaves Ho a broken man, but
it gets worse when he runs across Chan, who recognizes him as the
orchestrator of his wife's accident and stabs him to death - but not
before asking Ho why, which is exactly the question Ho cannot answer. Great
thriller that makes its biggest vice - its over-complex, over-complicated,
over-convoluted plot and plottwists - its virtue by making it the very
subject of its story, as the script writers were obviously very aware of
the sheer fact that the whole thing is ridiculously far-fetched, but
imbedded in the right context, the story still works like a charm - and if
a well-written story like this one is carried by well-paced storytelling,
a subtle yet effective direction and a great cast, then you get a great
movie - which Accident is of course.
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