Film Review: In Broad Daylight 白日之下 (2023) Hong Kong 🇭🇰
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critics Circle of Australia 🇦🇺)
Socially relevant Hong Kong cinema is usually at its best when it depicts true events with real emotions and people. This is precisely what Director Lawrence Kan manages to portray the bleak state of both investigative journalism and atrocious treatment of elderly and disabled in private care homes. Both matters are dealt with quite literally and heads on, as the film is based on true events, making the film with an extra layer of heart felt emotions all the more realistic to endure.
Jennifer Yu continues her good acting form with another excellent turn (likely Best Actress contender for next years Hong Kong Film Awards) as the determined investigative journalist who goes undercover into the corrupted and abusive elderly disabled care home. In the process she befriends the brilliant David Chiang (playing the “grandfather”), the evil principal terrifically underplayed by the underrated Bowie Lam and the emotionless nurse running the abusive show played by Baby Bo. Rachel Leung puts in a career best performance and Henick Chou also performs well as the mentally disabled residents being abused.
All in all, “In Broad Daylight” is an extremely heart wrenching film that shows the level of injustice and pitfalls of a systems that has become corrupted. It also shows that the most vulnerable are usually the ones who suffer the most both in silence and sadness. Director Kan created a brilliant set up for the characters to shine in their respective roles as the brutal messaging takes centerstage about a system that needs to be corrected, properly governance and most importantly for the sake of our future generations as well as the present. This is one Hong Kong film to watch in 2023.
I rated it 9/10