Article 20

Since taking a temporary position at the city prosecutor's office, Han Ming has been plagued with one headache after another.

Both in and out of work, Han Ming frequently talks to and travels with his colleague, Lu Lingling (a former college girlfriend of his), causing cases to drag on unresolved. His wife, Li Maojuan, even perceives this as him cheating.

Zhang Guisheng, a former bus driver, an acquaintance of Han Ming, was fired from his job several years ago for fighting back against hooligans who harassed a woman on the bus and got into a fight. He is going to take a train to Beijing to appeal the case (at his teenage daughter's insistence) but on the way to the train station is hit by a high-speed truck and dies.

Han Ming is also investigating a rape case filed by a deaf woman, Hao Xiuping. Her husband fatally stabbed the rapist and was incarcerated. The rapist's accomplices have been harassing the woman and attempting to force her to sign a document dropping the charges. Desperate and scared for the safety of her husband and child, she jumps off the top floor of a construction site.

His son Yuchen sees the son of his school's principal beating up a classmate and intervenes. He fights the son and breaks his nose, causing the principal to sue his parents. Yuchen refuses to apologize and does not explain the full situation. This causes a group of the principal's son's friends to beat him up one day.

His wife, outraged by this, takes matters into her own hands and assaults the principal, escalating the conflict even further and leading to her own arrest.

As the battle between emotion and law unfolds, and the struggle to balance career and family intensifies, Han Ming decides to risk everything, determined to uphold fairness and justice in his own way.

In court, Han Ming calls for charges against the defendants in all of these cases be dropped. He invokes Article 20 of Chinese criminal law, suggesting that all of these were valid self-defense cases. His speech receives applause from the audience, and all are freed.

• Lei Jiayin as Han Ming
• Ma Li as Li Maojuan
• Zhao Liying as Hao Xiuping
• Gao Ye [zh] as Lu Lingling
• Liu Yaowen as Han Yuchen
• Wang Xiao as Deputy Prosecutor Tian
• Chen Minghao [zh] as Li Maoquan
• Pan Binlong [zh] as Wang Yongqiang
• Zhang Yi as Zhang
• Fan Wei as Liu Bingren
• Yu Hewei as Prosecutor Wang

On January 12, 2024, the film was officially announced to be released on February 10, 2024 (the first day of the Lunar New Year), along with a scheduled poster (that revealed the cast of main actors for the first time) and a preview.^[3]