In WILD SEARCH, Chow Yun-Fat, the popular star of Ringo Lam s CITY ON FIRE and John Woo s HARD TARGET, reprises his familiar role as a lone wolf Hong Kong police detective. Here he plays Mew Mew, an emotionally fragile widow investigating arms smuggling. After her mother gets killed in a shoot-out with Japanese gangsters, a four-year-old girl named Ka Ka is the only witness who can identify the killer. Mew Mew takes her to the rural home of her aunt Cher (Cherie Chung). He arrives in a wounded state, and Cher mixes traditional Chinese medicines for him as he falls for her. The film is a change of pace for Lam. While there are the usual car chases and shoot-outs, WILD SEARCH is an attempt at a Hitchcock-style romance-thriller with believable characters who accidentally come in contact with criminals. Lam also wanted to contrast the lifestyle in the Chinese village with the hardness of urban Hong Kong. Although this isn t as extreme as in WITNESS, it nonetheless nicely captures the natural rhythms of rural life. But this idyll doesn t last long, and soon Mew Mew returns to the city to track down the gangsters who killed Ka Ka s mother.