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20 years ago, Joyce's (KAthy Chow) mother was brutally raped & murdered by
some psychopath. Now, Joyce is a cop at homicide, but she's so caught up in her
work that she has little time for a private life, let alone a love-life.
When she finds a woman murdered in exactly the same way as her mother -
& even her tongue was cut out, too - Joyce immediately knows tha the past
has come back to haunt her, but on the other hand she finally has a chance to
overcome her childhood demons.
But when a suspect, Lee Chung-Min is caught & even confesses to the
killing of the girl, he proves to be way too young to also have killed Joyce's
mother (he was 3 back then). So, while her colleagues celebrate a solved
case, Joyce has her suspicions that Lee Chung-Min is either only a scapegoat or
worked in team with a second (older) man. However, when Lee Chung-Min commits
suicide in his prison cell, she loses him as a source of information for good.
But the real killer - yes, Lee Chung-Min was only a scapegoat after all -
hasn't lost interest in playing with the police, & with Joyce in
particular, whom he remembers well from back when he murdered her mother. So he
soon releases May, a girl he has held captive for 13 years, just for the sake
of the psycho game he plays with Joyce. Of course he makes sure that Joyce
& colleagues find a trail that leads to him (without revealing his
identity), & soon Joyce decides to take care of May, who, after 13 years in
captivity with the killer she calls 'Uncle', knows nothing about the outside
world.
But Uncle is not satisfied yet, &, as Joyce leaves May in custody of
some colleagues in her appartment as she foes out for a couple of hours, he
moves in to kill all the cops taking care of May, & when Joyce comes back,
he slits her throat, too, but not fatally.
After this desaster, Joyce & her colleagues intensify the search for
Uncle, digging ever deeper into Joyce's own past, soon coming to the conclusion
that one of Joyce's so called uncles in the orphanage she grew up in has to be
the killer, & soon the killer is identified as Joyce's uncle Cheung,
whom May also identifies as Uncle. He is arrested, but before he can be
convicted, he is killed by the father of a girl he isbelieved to be abducted.
All's end that ends well ?
It seems so, as Joyce has finally overcome her childhood demons & is
actually able to open up to one of her colleagues, Wong, & even has normal
& healthy sex with him ...
But of course, Wong turns out to be the real Uncle, & he soon knocks her
out & abducts her to the very same appartment where she found her dead
mother 20 years ago, ties her to a chair, & gives a passionate speech about
his twisted motives in front of her & five girls he has held captive for
many years (including May), before starting to kill off the girls one by one.
& he would have finished the job too, wouldn't Joyce do the sensible thing
- insult his manhood. He gets angry enough to forget about the girls &
start threatening Joyce, but then May, with her last breath, plunges a knife
into his back, & now the tables are turned, as not only the 2 surviving
girls but also Joyce, who has been able to free herself from her ties, fight
Uncle/Wong, & finally, Joyce has to shoot him.
This intelligent if a bit sterile psychothriller was clearly inspired by Silence
of the Lambs, & it does contain a few too many twists & turns to
convince throughout, but it is well enough written to not insult the
intelligence of its viewer. The climax however totally fails to convince, as -
or so it seems - the director was indecisive whether to build it upon action or
upon suspense - & in the end did a little (& too little) of bboth,
which is initially doomed to fail.
Despite the title & the subject of the movie though, there is very
little sleaze involved - & is generally played down, too - & no nudity.
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