For a while, the highlights of “Article 20” are frequent and impressive enough to make you want to follow wherever Zhang and the gang are headed. SPP prosecutor Han Ming (Lei Jiayin) is a conflict-adverse doormat; he is also the audience’s surrogate. Han becomes reluctantly involved in the case against Hao Xiuping (Mandopop star Zhao Zanilia) and her missing partner Wang (Yu Hewei). Hao and Wang were victims of harassment, and, in Hao’s case, rape, after they borrowed money from Liu, a violent loan shark. Then, after Liu put Wang in a dog collar and viciously assaulted his wife, Wang stabbed Liu 26 times, leaving Liu to die a few days later in the hospital. Han doesn’t want to be involved with Hao or Wang; he’s still put in charge of their case. Han’s promotion understandably frustrates his idealistic colleague Lyu Lingling (Ye Gao).
Meanwhile, Han tries to protect his anxious and hilariously meddlesome wife Li Maojuan (Li Ma) from the (unfounded) suspicion that he’s having an affair with Lyu. Unfortunately for Han, conflict is unavoidable given a tangle of perpetually escalating developments in both his home and professional life. Chief among them: Han’s teenage son Yuchen (Liu Yaowen) faces criminal charges after he challenges a well-connected school bully, who soon leaves the picture, and is mostly represented by his stubborn and high-powered father, Director Zhang (Zhang Yi). Han doesn’t want to be involved in this dispute either, but he is anyway.
“Article 20” mostly works as a comedy about marriage for the same reason that it mostly doesn’t when it’s a pandering procedural about how justice and fairness can and must prevail despite selfish individuals. In real life, Zhang’s recent movies have half-benefited and half-suffered from the mainland government’s close support. He still has a gift for cultivating broad and jet-black comedy in stories about reluctant middlemen, soldiers, and government functionaries who, despite themselves, must bargain with other go-betweens in order to save themselves. So it’s no surprise that the best scenes in “Article 20” revolve around Han and his wife, especially given Lei and Li’s chemistry and timing.