Beyond the Sin

恶行之外

Hong Kong/China, 2025, colour, 2.35:1, 82 mins.

Director: Guo Wenqi 郭文奇.

Rating: 6/10.

A dark, extremely seedy serial-killer drama that’s a real curio despite being very messy at a narrative/plot level.

STORY

Hong Kong, the present day. The body of a missing 17-year-old girl, Zhang Lan (Deng Yueping), daughter of a small restaurant owner, is found strangled by the sea in Chizhu [Stanley], Hong Kong island. The case has similarities with the murder the previous week of Le Jiaqi (Lin Qianting), teenage daughter of Le Yiyan (Gu Tianle), a former inspector in the West Kowloon Serious Crimes Squad. Both girls were also disabled in the left leg. The police arrest Qiu Junwen (Lin Jiaxi), 19, for the murder of Zhang Lan, though the evidence is not conclusive. When Le Yiyan tries to get him to confess to the murder of Le Jiaqi, Qiu Junwen denies it and Le Yiyan is thrown out of police headquarters by the crime squad’s new boss, Da (Zhang Jicong). Le Yiyan is now head of security at Ainwick Technology & Engineering but is still obsessed with finding his daughter’s killer, whom he still beleieves to be Qiu Junwen. He is regularly fed police information by his former subordinate Kitty (Wang Minyi), though she always advises him not to be so impulsive. In the street one day he sees a retarded girl, Dingdang (Yang Siyong), wearing an ornament his daughter used to own; he slowly wins the girl’s confidence but she still can’t answer his questions. Then another teenage girl, the rebellious Lv Xirong (Chen Zixuan), is almost killed in the same way; her father (Zheng Zicheng), a member of LegCo, tries to hush the case up when he learns Lv Yirong has been secretly working as a paid escort. However, Le Yiyan manages to talk to her and learns she once had a problematic left leg. Le Yiyan tells Kitty to check on all Hong Kong females aged 15-21 with disabled left legs, but Da tells her to ignore him. On her way to the airport next evening, Lv Xirong is picked up by the same van driver (Lin Jiadong) who earlier tried to strangle her. For lack of conclusive evidence, the police release Qiu Junwen, who is met by his mother Qiu Shuxian (Che Wanwan); the two are later joined by the van driver, whose name is Song Jingnan (Lin Jiadong) and is known to both of them. He later goes to the home of Dingdang, who lives with her crazed, abusive mother (Sun Jiajun). While he’s there, Le Yiyan, who’s been tracking him, suddenly arrives.

REVIEW

Shot back in spring 2021, and marking the directorial debut of Hong Kong’s Guo Wenqi 郭文奇, an assistant director on dozens of commercial movies since the 1990s, Beyond the Sin 恶行之外 is a dark, extremely seedy crime drama that’s a real curio despite being very messy at a narrative/plot level. With a name cast led by Gu Tianle 古天乐 [Louis Koo] and Lin Jiadong 林家栋 [Gordon Lam], and buckets of rain-soaked, moodily-lit direction as a former cop hunts his teenage daughter’s serial killer, it just about manages to hold the attention across 80 minutes thanks to the intensity of the whole thing and (especially in the early stages) the concentration required to work out what’s going on amid all the fancy, time-warp editing. Yet to emerge in Hong Kong, the coproduction finally premiered in the Mainland in Jan 2025 but took only a feeble RMB13.6 million. In mid-March it was released online.

Given the presence of Gu (whose One Cool Film Production was a co-financer) and Lin in the cast, as well as a reported budget of RMB96 million, the suspiciously short running time suggests either drastic re-editing during post-production or drastic cutting to get a Mainland release certificate. Either way, the editing, credited to Hong Kong’s experienced mainstream cutter Huang Hai 黄海, slides back and forth with no warning between past and present, often needlessly confusing the viewer and, at the start, not helping to establish a clear timeline. There are also copious signs that the original script by Zhang Feifan 张飞帆, a Hong Kong writer who mostly works in theatre but has also penned lyrics and some TVDs, was even sleazier than what’s managed to reach the screen in this Mainland cut.

In a role that really requires a more nuanced actor, Gu is miscast as Le Yiyan, a former police inspector and devoted father who’s determined to nail the killer of his teenage daughter, a talented pianist with a partly false left leg. A similar murder leads the police to think a serial killer with a thing for disabled girls may be at large; meanwhile, Le Yiyan obsessively blunders around, helped by info fed to him by a former subordinate (poised actress-singer Wang Minyi 王敏奕). It’s a one-note performance in which Gu looks permanently pained/angry, and doesn’t elicit much sympathy for his character. Other roles – including Lin as a scruffy weirdo who’s always hanging around, a brief appearance by Lin Jiaxin 林嘉欣 [Karena Lam] as Le Yiyan’s happy-then-traumatised wife, Zhang Jicong 张继聪 as the clueless police inspector – are equally one-dimensional. So, it’s down to the plot itself to engage the audience – not so easy given its often garbled structure.

Between copious signs that the original had a lot more sex and drugs than has actually reached the screen, the film stirs in plenty of atmosphere, courtesy d.p. Guan Zhiyao 关智耀 [Jason Kwan] and production designer Huang Bingyao 黄炳耀 [Pater Wong], both experienced Hong Kong hands: rain-drenched nights, grungy settings, disabled teen victims tied up in basements, a retarded street-girl and her abusive mother (authentically played by Yang Siyong 杨偲泳, A Guilty Conscience 毒舌大状, 2023, and Singapore-born veteran Sun Jiajun 孙佳君), and buckets of physical and verbal abuse. The problem is that, for the first hour, the audience is largely left to fend for itself, inbetween all the sleaze; only at the 62-minute mark does some important information about one of the characters allow for more audience engagement as the film starts revealing its secrets and backstory, inbetween thundering on to the finale.

Action staging by Hong Kong’s Deng Ruihua 邓瑞华 is realistic; scoring by Japanese American Hatano Yusuke 波多野裕介 (SoulMate 七月与安生, 2016) adds atmosphere without being over-weird. The film’s Chinese title means “Beyond Evil”, which is a much better one than Beyond the Sin but has already been used by a 1980 US haunted-house movie and the 2021 South Korean TV drama 괴물, about two cops hunting a serial killer.

CREDITS

Presented by Shanghai Lian Ray Pictures (CN), One Cool Film Production (HK), Horgos Lian Ray Pictures (CN), Zhejiang Lian Ray Pictures (CN). Produced by Blue Sea Productions (HK).

Script: Zhang Feifan. Photography: Guan Zhiyao [Jason Kwan]. Editing: Huang Hai. Music: Hatano Yusuke, Xie Peicheng. Production design: Huang Bingyao [Pater Wong]. Art direction: Ou Yinwen. Styling: Huang Jiabao. Sound: Tan Derong. Action: Deng Ruihua. Car stunts: Zhang Weixun. Visual effects: Wu Jialong, Tan Qikun.

Cast: Gu Tianle [Louis Koo] (Le Yiyan/Allen), Lin Jiadong [Gorden Lam] (Song Jingnan), Zhang Jicong (Koushui Da/Da), Sun Jiajun (Shali/Sally, Dingdang’s mother), Wang Minyi (Maozai/Kitty), Che Wanwan (Qiu Shuxian/Sonia, Qiu Junwen’s mother), Yang Siyong (Dingdang), Lin Qianting (Le Jiaqi, Le Yiyan’s daughter), Zheng Zicheng (Lv Yiping), Lin Jiaxi (Qiu Junwen/Manny), Chen Zixuan (Lv Xirong, Lv Yiping’s daughter), Deng Yueping (Zhang Lan), Lin Jiaxin [Karena Lam] (Guan Baoyu, Le Yiyan’s wife), Zhang Feifan (Wen/Matt), Zou Wenzheng (Ming), He Jingwei (Mandy), Lu Yong (IT King).

Release: Hong Kong, tba; China, 11 Jan 2025.