Justice Sung Begins (2024)

This drama is surprisingly good, but…

I thought I would watch it for a while before writing a review as it started out pretty good, but as most dramas shown on TVB get worse later after a good start, I was hesitant to post an early opinion on this. However, I did not need to be concerned as this drama kicks all kinds of butt!

Vincent Wong stars as the Song Sai Kit, the incredibly intelligent, hilarious and sometimes lecherous lawyer. He had the potential to become a government official but gave up when he noticed how officials just bullied people, instead swapping his exam paper with a future ally played by Lam Chi Chung. Many do not know who Lam Chi Chung is until you say “oh you know, that fat guy who was in Stephen Chow’s last few movies” and immediately people go “oooh!!” Lam Chi Chung is also the director of this drama, and you can see some of the Stephen Chow influences in this drama for sure, but I believe this is fine because he was able to work with such a legend.

We follow Vincent around as he makes a name for himself slowly becoming known as the greatest lawyer or “King of Lawyers” for his righteous deeds, albeit not always his original intention for doing so. Watching the main characters do some cross dressing and getting into mischief was all very entertaining to watch. Elaine Yiu plays Ling Lung, Vincent’s wife in the drama and she does an amazing job in portraying the simple-minded and naive nature of the character, along with her great knowledge of martial arts. The chemistry between her and Vincent is okay, nothing amazing but it represents their relationship early in the drama accurately as Vincent initially wanted a divorce as he was forced into the marriage.

What spurred me to write this review was the recent case that just wrapped up in episode 14 and had me laughing my butt off. Vincent decides to spread his name around China so travels with his wife and buddies to a neighbouring town. In this town, there is a disgusting villain who cons people into digging up coal under the pretence of digging up gold, making them sign contracts that essentially prevent them leaving early. When these people discover it’s coal and not gold so want to leave, they get beaten half to death and cannot go since the contracts prevent them anyway. This villain was named Wong Ho Shun, basically Vincent Wong actual Chinese name. Vincent essentially spends a few episodes calling himself a disgusting asshole and every other curse from the period, which is hilarious if you’re in on the joke. Later when under a disguise, he is asked what his name was so he gave a false name Cheung Chun-long, which is Owen Cheung’s real name and an actor he worked with on several TVB dramas. That was a great meta joke and you need to be a fan of TVB dramas to really get it but I loved it.

The weakest parts of the drama come from two places: Ada Wong and the dubbing. Ignoring that Ada Wong is Wong Jing’s daughter (yes, THAT Wong Jing), here she only has one mode: angry uncivilised girl. She just growls and screams all her lines so there is nothing really compelling about her character, she’s just there to be the love interest to Ah Kau, played by King Kong Lee, but at least it isn’t too offensive so I can ignore it. Also, the dubbing can be quite jarring. Luckily the lipsync is very good but you can tell when a section was dubbed over because of how the audio changes and feels off. I understand that some lines need to be dubbed due to poor audio at the time of recording, but as I always say, just get a better boom mic.

So far this is great. This drama only had 18 episodes so we have 4 left and haven’t seen Benny Chan yet, so I am guessing the final 4 episodes will involve him somehow. Man, I am not a fan of Benny Chan as his acting is literally just him shouting a lot, but we’ll see how it goes. Maybe Lam Chi Chung flexed his director muscle/fat and reined in Benny’s anger acting? We can only wait and see.

Update: dammit, the final case gave me huge mixed emotions. The last case is really the most complex and the stakes are high. We really see the main cast acting serious, it is great to see Vincent Wong and Elaine Yiu finally using their dramatic acting skills finally as the entire drama up until then had been very lighthearted. However, the screenwriter messes this all up.

We see Ada Wong get drugged and violently raped by a British Envoy. She is found by King Kong Lee and taken to safety. Up until then I found Ada really annoying but after that scene and seeing her reaction later as she had to deal with the trauma of what happened to her and finding out that Vincent was going to defend that British Envoy, I felt she had improved and was going to accept her character. But not a few episodes later, after a week of so had passed in the drama, she appeared to back to normal and completely fine! No PTSD? No fear of going out alone at night? She recovered remarkably quickly as if rape was such an easy thing to get over. Wtf?

What I also found ridiculous was Ling Long’s secret back story. Vincent divorces her so that in the event he messes up the case with the British guy that he would not get her killed as well, but just as assassins come to kill Vincent due to him deciding to turn against the British guy, Ling Long suddenly appears and fights them all off. Now this scene alone was really dumb because in the entire fight Ling Long is outnumbered by 20 people or more, and yet the assassins all target her when she appears and nobody thinks “oh hey while she is busy let’s chop Sung Sai Kit in half” as nobody pays him any attention. In any case, they manage to escape and we find out Ling Long was a member of the Little Dagger Clan that helped people, and that clan decided that Vincent was worth protecting as he looked like he could also help people. So how do they decide to protect him. Let Ling Long marry him. What? So you’re telling me Ling Long, who was working at a brothel when they first met, suddenly decided at that time Vincent was worth protecting and became his wife? This is not elaborated on at all, when did the clan decide he was worth protecting? How did they know he would not be a selfish money grabbing bastard? Nothing is explained!

And finally we get to Benny Chan as Chan Mong Gat, who finally appears in the last 2 episodes. The guy has not changed at all, his acting is just him shouting loudly and being obnoxious. There is not subtlety at all to his acting method, so I was glad he only appeared very briefly, but it was so brief that I do not think he was worth adding to the main poster of the drama. Why put him in there?

Despite those issues, overall this is a good drama. The crap dragged the score from a 9 to a 7 because it felt rushed and sensitive topics were not approached tactfully. It felt like this needed to be 20 episodes and not 18, but hey I didn’t decide on the episode count. The drama ends on a cliffhanger so we may get a season 2, hopefully season 2 has more episodes and handles it’s sensitive topics more carefully.

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