For about the first two-thirds of its' running time, Murderer is one of the most boring "thrillers" you would ever have the displeasure of sitting through, unless you're a fan of watching Aaron Kwok act, which mostly means portraying various emotions, all of which seemingly point to him being constipated. But then a mind-boggingly illogical twist is introduced which turns Murderer into one of the better comedies you're likely to come across this year, albeit a totally unintentional one.

Aaron plays Inspector Guang, your usual hard-boiled Hong Kong cop on the edge. He's investigating a series of murders where the victims (at least according to this movie's craptacular subtitles) have been "blood-let" by an electric drill. As the case goes deeper, all the signs point to Guang as being the culprit, but as quick as you can say "lazy screenwriting", the aforementioned twist is thrown in. Since any sort of enjoyment you'd squeeze out of this turkey is based solely on the "shock" of the twist, I won't outright reveal it here, except for a bit of a tease in picture form.

Murderer is the type of movie that defies the notion of "good" or "bad" cinema. Certainly, if one would take it on the surface as a standard thriller, it fails miserably. Not only is the story totally ridiculous (even in the realm of Hong Kong "flying paper" productions) but Aaron Kwok displays all the personality of a semi-warm floater sitting inside a port-a-potty, which leads the viewer to become totally disinterested in the proceedings, aside from the occasional small splatterings of gore displayed.

But if the viewer gives director Roy Chan and screenwriter Christine To the benefit of the doubt and somehow tricks themselves into thinking that they were actually creating a send-up of the genre, one might be able to pull a few pearls (or at least some chuckles) out of the slop trough that is this picture. At least that's what your friendly neighborhood reviewer did, and that made Murderer at least something that's tolerable, instead of the blitzkrieg of total dreck assaulting your eyeballs it could have ended up being.

RATING: 5