All the Wrong Clues for the Right Solution
1981 film by Tsui Hark
All the Wrong Clues for the Right Solution (Chinese: 鬼馬智多星) is a 1981 Hong Kong neo-noir crime comedy film directed and co-written by Tsui Hark, and starring George Lam, Teddy Robin (who also scored the film), and Karl Maka (who also co-wrote the story). A satire of detective fiction, the film follows a down-on-his-luck private investigator and a police detective, who team up to take down a gangster who is planning to cheat elderly millionaires out of their stocks.
The film was Tsui's first commercial success and was the fourth highest grossing Hong Kong film of 1981. It was nominated for five Golden Horse Awards and won three, including for Best Director.
Plot
Chief Inspector Robin receives information about the release of a felon who is rumored to be interested in murdering someone. At first, he is unable to determine the identity of both the felon and the supposed victim. However, after some research, he concludes the felon is triad boss Ah Capone and the victim is private investigator Yoho. In order to protect Yoho, Inspector Robin arrests him on a trivial charge and locks him up at the police station.
After Capone is released from prison he meets up with the four heads of the four families to re-establish his position as head honcho and express his goal of murdering Yoho. He issues a death warrant for Yoho and sends henchman, Popeye to act upon it.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “All the Wrong Clues for the Right Solution” is 1981 film by Tsui Hark. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Wrong, Clues and Right, not as a finished interpretation.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16241439. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1981.
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This entry incorporates text from “All the Wrong Clues for the Right Solution” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.