Fridae

Lady Cop and Papa Crook is supposed to be Sammi Cheng's big comeback after an absence of three years from the silver screen. (Her last screen role was the unsatisfying soap opera Everlasting Regret in 2005 by gay director Stanley Kwan.) But happy as we are to see her hamming it up for the screen once more with her impeccable comic acting, we have to report that the film is nothing to shout about.

Lady Cop and Papa Crook is below-average action comedy about Inspector Molline Szeto (Sammi), an up-and-coming police detective who is assigned to investigate the kidnapping of the son of an illegal oil baron (Eason Chan). Though they distrust each other at first, this gradually gives way to friendship�

As always, Sammi is delightful in her role as the quirky Inspector Molline Szeto - the name alone is funny - who is great at solving cases but hopeless at relationships. From the first reel to the last, she proves why she's still one of Hong Kong's most popular entertainers. Even Eason Chan, though passable, cannot match her breezy comic panache and effortless line delivery.

That said, Sammi alone cannot salvage the messy script and direction by Alan Mak and Felix Cheong (Moonlight in Tokyo), which frequently meanders into uninteresting subplots and secondary characters. Alan and Felix may be great screenwriters - they wrote the superb Infernal Affairs trilogy together - but they falter when they have to write and direct.