Traces of Justice review – arresting forensic cop thriller chases the science

Based on real scientist Cui Daozhi, this sharp feature has thumping set pieces and knotty puzzles set across 30 years of gripping cases

The latest from Chen Sicheng, prime mover behind the hit Detective Chinatown franchise, offers a disarming mix of propaganda, copaganda and gripping narrative. It’s essentially a portmanteau biopic: its hero is Cui Xun, a fictional stand-in for the venerable Cui Daozhi, a still-extant real-life figure who so revolutionised forensic science he became known as “China’s Sherlock Holmes”. Ripping three-and-a-bit tales from the casebook – involving a 1970s child killer, a grisly 1980s multiple murder and a 1990s bus bombing (plus one lingering loose end), Chen constructs a history of forensic investigation that is also, in variably oblique ways, a history of Chinese law enforcement, which is shown…