
The First Shot
1993

Representation Score
Limited
1981
Director
Patrick Yuen Ho-Chuen
Runtime
89 minutes
Average Rating
No ratings yetNew Showbiz Analysis
What Price Honesty? is a visceral crime thriller that prioritizes genre clichés over social subversion. The film focuses on the brutal struggle of idealistic police graduates against a corrupt system, leaning heavily into masculine-coded action.
Category Breakdown
The film does not include any LGBTQ+ characters or narratives that question the assumption that everyone is straight or cisgender. It follows the traditional gender and orientation norms typical of 1981 Hong Kong action cinema.
The story centers on male police graduates navigating a struggle against depravity. Female characters do not play a significant role in driving the story or challenging traditional leadership hierarchies.
The cast is ethnically uniform, reflecting the localized Hong Kong production context. The film does not utilize multicultural casting or metaphors for racial diversity.
The narrative explores systemic corruption through a standard moral conflict between idealism and depravity. It functions as a genre-driven crime thriller rather than a critique of broader social institutions.
There is no mention of characters with visible or invisible disabilities. These themes do not appear to be central to the narrative.
Present on Screen
Limited or Absent
Official Synopsis
Police corruption is the theme of this brutal harbinger of the bleak "new wave" crime thriller. Pai Piao, Danny Lee, and "Venom" Sun Chien star as idealistic police school graduates who run afoul of such vicious, murderous depravity that the cop who is killed first could be considered the lucky one.

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