The Enigmatic Case

Every director has to start somewhere, and this is where To's career saw its origin. Don't expect too much from the film, like most of his fellow Hong Kong directors To needed a couple of films to get the hang of things. The Enigmatic Case is pretty basic genre fare, a film made with a very specific audience and goal in mind.

Lu is a prisoner who is waiting for his execution. The government isn't too keen on going through with it, as they suspect he knows the location of a secret treasure. Their torture techniques aren't very successful and Lu manages to escape. As he flees, he runs into Yu, an attractive young woman on the way to collect her father's ashes.

There isn't too much martial arts here (and the bits that are there are pretty crummy), instead, the film focuses more on the titular case. Sadly, that case isn't all that enigmatic and apart from some smaller interludes, there is very little of note here. It's just simple genre filler, a perfect film for a beginning director to learn the trade.