Writer: Ezekiel Lee Zhiang Yang

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Watch this if you liked: "Election","Run Papa Run"

Seasonal sex farce rubbishman Wong Jing stretches to a semi-serious level in producing this messy, unfocused and overcrowded crime drama loosely centred around how the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) in Hong Kong came to be, told mostly through the eyes of Eason Chan's morally ambiguous bent cop character.

The man evens stars in it (one of his more meaningful appearances to date) as a sniggering, bent middleman with all ten fingers and toes in every dirty pie all over the island. "I Corrupt All Cops" benefits immensely from a stellar cast with solid turns from everyone - Anthony Wong has fun being a lowlife cop turned good and Tony Leung (the uglier, more talented one) is effortlessly glorious as the underhanded police chief (although he can't dribble a football to save his life). Busty broad Natalie Meng Yao, the Wong Jing-favourited milk factory (to borrow Anthony Wong's words from the movie) has been... well, 'industrious' since "Beauty And The Seven Beasts", "My Wife Is A Gambling Maestro" and "The Vampire Who Admires Me", giving us an eyeful whenever she can in this movie. Even her Cantonese (if it was indeed hers) has improved!

Easy complaints against the movie would include some sporadic cheesiness (especially by some over-acting peripheral characters who say silly things) and also the annoying censoring of Anthony Wong's cutter blade Canto-cussing (if you're watching this in sensitive territories like Malaysia). However seasoned HK cinema fans will tell you that this movie is by and large uneven in execution and direction. Character development is (for once in a movie!) overdone and we get a few odd developments that frustratingly toss the story about. The movie spreads itself too thin and ends up achieving only half of what it would have had if the script were tighter.

Still it's not every day we get to see Tony Leung and Anthony Wong share the screen. "I Corrupt All Cops" is a missed opportunity on every front it tries to assault but we can be sure it's worth a watch, if only to hear some fresh creative swearing in Cantonese.

Cinema Online, 21 May 2009