Bak yat ji ha

Putting a loved one into a care home is a difficult predicament. There's the powerlessness and guilt of not being able to do more than you can. Knowing that they're waiting for the inevitable end alone, the hope is your loved one person is in the best hands possible.

In Broad Daylight is a slice-of-life social issue drama that toys with that very notion in a thought-provoking fashion. Based on a real-life scandal of the Cambridge Nursing Home, whose staff was caught water hosing the elderly in groups on an open rooftop in 2015 and later exposed for physically abusing their patients.

Investigative reporter Kay receives an anonymous tip and goes undercover into the Rainbow Care Home, an elderly home that is allegedly physically abusing and mistreating its patients behind the scenes.

In Broad Daylight is a heavy but worthy watch. The film forces the audience to confront difficult ignored feelings, empathizing with the elderly being alone, neglected, and becoming an unwanted burden on their families. And for younger people, there's the abject terror of living in an elderly home when you get old one day.

Jennifer Yu leads the movie adequately as the journalist and is wonderfully supported by a strong ensemble cast of veteran actors, including Shaw Brothers' David Chiang and Bowie Wu as elderly patients and Bo Pui Yue as the scary abusive nurse and a scene-stealing Bowie Lam as the care home's warden. Rachel Leung and Henick Chou also shine as two mentally disabled patients. I expect acting accolades for the majority of the supporting cast come awards season.

Writer-director Lawrence Kwan Chun Kan presents the everyday ins and outs of life in the elderly home, peeling the onion layers and examining the situation from all sides, even from the perspective of its supposed evil staff.

In the film's highlight moment, Bowie Lam's warden delivers a bone-chilling monologue on how society neglects the elderly. And he is right.

The film emphasizes that it's up to the press to expose these scandals further to end them, ending on a slight dissonant note. That might be true, but as the credits rolled, my mind gravitated towards the fate of the abused elderly patients-specifically all the actual abused patients out there that the film is representing. That's a much more compelling thought to end on.

That minor quibble aside, In Broad Daylight achieves its goals effectively, almost like a wake-up call to anyone with a parent living in a care home, reminding them to spend more time and perhaps even to examine their living conditions. This movie is bound to leave a lasting impression.

This film is marvelous,no matter the director or writer, everything is brilliant. Lawrence Kwan handled the film well.

The whole film is heavy and heartbreaking and it broke my heart in a million ways, especially it was based in a true story. Some scenes shocked me. Some said film is a medium that reflects social reality, and this film tells us what exactly happening in Hong Kong.

Not much to comment on the performances, they are great.

In broad daylight, many bad guys will do evil things that are not in line with human nature. They escape because of the loopholes in the system. We need to use limited power to defend correct things and values.

This is actually quite an harrowing film that follows the investigative journalism of a woman who poses as the grandfather of a man in the rather dilapidated "Rainbow Bridge" Care Home. "Kay" (Jennifer Yu) turns up one day to chat with her aged and senile relative only to witness scenes of neglect and violence that the nurses and manager put down to discipline and being understaffed. That second point is most definitely true, and after befriending the cook she volunteers to assist - only to discover that what she saw on day one is but the tip of the iceberg and that the place has an history epitomised by the terrified "Ming Chai" (Henick Chou) and the young and impressionable "Wong Siu-Ling" (Rachel Leung) who pays an heavy price for her love of ice-cream. As the story unfolds, we realise that nobody is quite whom they appear and we find ourselves involved in legal proceedings that show up a shocking lack of interest from the authorities, some money-grabbing and duplicitous investors, a staff who treat these patients with scant regard - and that's at best, and we are exposed to an environment of physical, mental and sexual cruelty that makes you squirm. The acting from Yu and from the increasingly impressive (if odious) Bowie Lam as the man in charge is potently effective, as is the rather sparing dialogue - so much of this is laid before us for our own evaluation and that works well too. The conclusion - well you couldn't really make that up and it does disgust, on so many fronts. It's well worth a watch, this film.

Firstly let me congratulate all the winners in the movie including best actress supporting actor and actress

A well deserved win indeed the acting of all the actors was superb.. the movie really brings you as though you are the one living in the caring centre.

The location and the set designer were great too highlighting the actual environment which is now currently facing by the elderly and the handicapped people in HK

But for the movie I felt it to be a bit boring and the pacing to be a bit slow other than that everything was all dandy for me

A big shout out to Bowie Wu for his performance in the movie.. which was outstanding.

In Broad Daylight - 7.5/10

A Hong Kong set Chinese film about systemic abuse in care homes. It's an investigative journalism procedural and it ticks all the boxes you expect. It's very similar to the Weinstein exposé film She Said and follows more of less the exact same template.

I expected the horrors of the care home abuse to be frequent and harrowing, but it instead focuses more on the human relationships between the various residents that occupy the home. It is at its best in the quieter moments when human emotion is allowed to bubble up to the surface. The score and cinematography kick in, and you get way more heart-warming moments than I expected.

Towards the end the focus on the abuses does ramp up, but it is handled tastefully and doesn't contrive any unnecessary shock tactics to convey its message. Some of the subtitles moved extremely fast so there are a few snippets of info I didn't fully take in. It touches on the widespread scale of the abuse throughout the country and given that it has only recently been exposed the mainstream media, it makes it all feel extremely prescient.

An important film that approaches its difficult subject matter with respect, but perhaps in the hands of a better storyteller it could have been more impactful.

Much like the Anthony Hopkins film One Life that I saw a few weeks ago, at the end of the film everyone remained seated till the very end of the credits as a mark of respect for the subject matter.