Over the past 25 years or so, Felix Chong and Alan Mak have established themselves as two of Hong Kong’s best commercial screenwriters. They are the writing team behind the internationally acclaimed Infernal Affairs (remade in the USA as The Departed) as well as local hits Overheard, Initial D, and Lady Cop and Papa Crook. More recently Felix Chong has been winning plaudits as writer/director of Project Gutenberg (2018) and Goldfinger (2023). For his own part Alan Mak has written and directed Integrity (2019) and The Procurator (2023).

In among their early run of successful movies they also wrote this neat little police thriller, which Alan Mak co-directed with Andrew Lau (Infernal Affairs). Confession of Pain (its Chinese title translates literally as Forlorn City) is a gripping melodrama with a rare spin.

It is, in essence, a murder mystery. The difference is that we know the identity of the killer within 20 minutes. The remaining 90 are spent finding out why the murder occurred, and whether or not the killer is going to get away with it. Coming home after a sting operation, police officer Bong (the always appealing Kaneshiro Takeshi) finds his pregnant girlfriend dead from suicide. Three years later, Bong is now an alcoholic private investigator. He is dragged back into the life of his ex-partner Hei (the always excellent Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) when the father of Hei’s wife Susan (Xu Jinglei) is murdered. While the police investigation is ongoing, Susan asks Bong to conduct his own investigation.

While not scaling the dramatic heights of Infernal Affairs or Overheard, Confession of Pain remains a gripping and effective thriller. It is certainly a heightened and emotional film, and those with an aversion to drama from the blunter end of the spectrum might consider giving it a miss. Many elements – such as Bong’s drunkenness – are rather over the top.

There is also a tendency in Hong Kong cinema to use female characters in a specific way; one that is very much in effect here. Hollywood has an awful habit of using female characters as damsels in distress, or sex objects, or as a prize for the male protagonist to win over in one fashion or another. Hong Kong cinema is somewhat different I think: all too often the female characters exist not as a reward but to provoke an emotional response in the males. Bong’s personal arc can only be kicked into gear by the death of his girlfriend – her only purpose is to provoke the story. It’s a phenomenon well known to American comic book readers – they call it ‘women in refrigerators’ after a particular incident in a 1990s Green Lantern comic. The effect often creates quite weak female characters, and I think the female characters are visibly like that here. Both Xu Jinglei and Shu Qi (as Bong’s new girlfriend) give strong, likeable performances – and are both exceptional actors – but there is only so much an actor can do on their own.

Despite these flaws, Confession of Pain remains another effective, gripping entry in Mak and Chong’s canon of crime films. If only there was a little more in the characters, and this good film could have been great.