Review:

Ever eager to find fault with films produced by the Hong Kong cinema, this film has been unfairly accused of being a flagrant rip off of Peter Weir's Witness, yet aside from some superficial premise similarity i.e.: the plot device of a young child being sole witness to a murder and that child's relatives being "from the country", there is little resemblance to "Witness" in plot or characterizations. Where Witness revolved around an idyllic, if improbably love story set against a police conspiracy thriller, Wild Search elevates the premise to a story about loss, love and learning to live again, and offers a far more insightful glimpse into the human condition than its predecessor.

Chow Yun Fat plays Hong Kong Police Sergeant Lau Chun Pong, nicknamed "Mew Mew" which he says means "Kitten" in Cantonese. Mew Mew Lau is a man in a downward spiral, having lost his wife and child in a robbery. When first introduced, he's sitting in a car, chain smoking cigarettes and drinking from his flask, watching the drama of street life before him as he awaits the arrival of an informant. His expression is disinterested and weary. In numbing himself from his grief, he is now numb to life. His job apparently is the thing that keeps him going, and he is good at what he does.

He commands the loyalty, respect and affection of his colleagues and supervisor in spite self destructive tendencies and habits. No paranoid conspiracies here, just a compelling portrait of a man overwhelmed by his losses trying to function in the larger world.

Cherie Chung plays the sister of the murdered arms dealer--whose death sets the plot in motion. Chung's Cher Lee is a woman of quiet strength and dignity. Life has not been kind to her. Her husband betrayed her, leading a secret second life with a woman from the Chinese interior, fathering a son. During their marriage he berated her for being clumsy and stupid. Rather than continuing to suffer the humiliation, Cher has divorced him and lives quietly in a village in the New Territories with her father, working along side him in the fields, harvesting bamboo.