Behind The Shadows  (PG13)

Starring Louis Koo, Chrissie Chau, Liu Kuan-ting, Renci Yeung, Raymond Wong

Directed by Jonathan Li, Chou Man Yu

Louis Koo plays a low-rent private detective, Auyeong Wai Yip, displaced from Hong Kong, who investigates humdrum missing persons and infidelity cases — cheating wives and girlfriends —  in Kuala Lumpur.

Until he stumbles upon the trail of a serial killer strangling wayward women after a client hires him to investigate his unfaithful girlfriend. In the mother of all adultery twists, that girlfriend turns out to be Auyeong's own wife.

Yep, it's kinda nuts.

Suddenly, the PI’s routine is turned upside down when he faces three cheating cases, dead bodies and his own crumbling marriage. Worse, a creepy cop, Chen (Taiwanese actor Liu Kuan-ting from Old Fox), takes a personal interest in Auyeong up to home-and-office invasion level. The lawman is overly glum and numb since his own iffy spouse is mysteriously stuck in a coma.

Man, it's like a Cheating Wives Convention here. This pic, co-directed by Jonathan Li (the sharper Dust To Dust), starts out fine and grips us. Before losing it with an unconvincing villain and a final act that simply looks zany.

Auyeong's ah beng-gangster pal, Clawy (Raymond Wong), assigns him to follow a nightclubbing ah lian, Betty (The Goldfinger’s Renci Yeung), who’s suspected of two-timing the latter's mob boss. Another gal (Malaysian actress Yumi Wong), is reported missing by her fiancé. The third woman is Kuan Weng Sam (Prison Flowers’ Chrissie Chau), Auyeong's missus, who seems frustrated in their home before popping up in a hotel room with another dude.

Nevertheless, the old pro is a true pro as he tasks the snoop job on his wife to his incompetent workers. “I guess he (the client) is looking for me,” Auyeong admits. In a good plot point, he blames himself for getting one girl murdered on a stakeout gone wrong due to his marital distraction.

Everyone here, as any Chandleresque-wannabe yarn dictates, may or may not be connected in an interweaving film noir way. Writer/co-director Chou Man Yu cites crime novelist Raymond Chandler as an influence despite our bright warm weather dissipating the requisite nocturnal coldness away.

Sorry, it's actually trop noir — trop for tropical — as Koo, looking younger with nerd spectacles and a mop of hair, traverses sunny, humid multi-racial KL in a short-sleeved shirt and a snappy temper. Making the proverbially cool genre gumshoe look more like a harried gum-sandal.

Behind the Shadows: Louis Koo and Chrissie Chau as a married couple going through a rough patch. 

You see this trop noir in transplanted crime thrillers set in Malaysia with Hong Kongers fronting them. Like Philip Keung in The Locksmith and Francis Ng in A Place Called Silence.

They don’t look meaty and in-charge out of their HK comfort zone. They look sweaty, heaty and spent. Which is a good, interesting thing.

“I was famous in Hong Kong,” Auyeong tells his Malaysian wife about his former ace-PI reputation back home while standing on a highway where they trash out their marriage woes in a great scene. She feels not listened to. He thinks he's turned into a failure by coming to a foreign land to please her.

But this is actually Koo explaining to his employee, fellow HKer Chau, about the real-life changing landscape, literally, of Hong Kong cinema. “Employee” because Behind The Shadows is star-producer-bossman Koo’s own production company One Cool Picture's first film in Malaysia.

Here’s the thing. This un-atmospheric, too far-fetched detective tale that’s more hard luck than hard-boiled grabs and leaks at the same time. It’s leaky because of the actions and motivations of key characters — namely, the detective's wife, Kuan, and the cop, Chen. They don’t make much sense.

Hey, it's 2025. Surely infidelity and divorce aren’t such big life-changing deals.

But the show captivates due to Koo's private eye with a public conscience. “I am a private detective. I'm obligated to investigate,” Auyeong insists even as things start to get hairy.

Photo: Shaw Organisation