Détective Dee : Le mystère de la flamme fantôme

Eight years ago, Detective Dee (Andy Lau) and compatriot Shatuo (Tony Leung Ka-fai), among others, opposed the queen regent (Carina Lau) in her bid to become the first female Emperor of China; for their treason, Detective Dee was imprisoned and Shatuo lost a hand. Now it is eight years later and the regent is poised to fully become the Emperor, but her coronation is imperiled by mysterious deaths that occur inside the 66-storey high statue of Buddha that is being constructed in honour of the coronation. Not one, but two functionaries seemingly spontaneously combust, and there seems to be no explanation for this. After consulting the Chaplain (in the person of a deer), the Emperor-to-be decides to free Detective Dee to solve this crime before her coronation; not to be naive, she also assigns Shanguan Jing'er (Bingbing Li), her favourite female warrior, and Pei Donglai (Chao Deng), an albino warrior, to shadow and help Detective Dee, perhaps to his own peril. Meanwhile, Shatuo has become the architect and supervisor of the building of the Buddha, and only he knows the secret of the fire turtles....

There's a bit of everything in "Detective Dee," including mystery, romance, fighting, martial arts, intrigue and, perhaps, a touch or more of the supernatural. To be honest, it doesn't bear serious scrutiny in terms of logic or loopholes, but that's not why one watches a film like this anyway – this is the kind of movie where the audience should just go along for the ride. And a wild ride it is too. I'm still not entirely certain what happened in the end, but it hardly matters; it was enough just to watch the various goings-on and admire the scenery and the fighting.

It had been a while since I had seen a Tsui Hark movie. I now feel remiss in not better keeping up with his career.

Detective Dee is fantastic! The visuals are stunning. The sweeping, epic scenery and the HUGE set pieces transported me fully into the era of the Tang Dynasty. I was impressed by the CGI, often having trouble distinguishing where the real, physical parts of the set ended and the computer generated world began. The cinematography is superb.

The story was complex but still digestible. The filmmakers threw up enough red herrings to keep me guessing while making it believable that Detective Dee could solve the case without huge leaps in logic.

I found Andy Lau's performance effective, but was particularly impressed by Carina Lau who played Empress Wu. Her performance was both subtle and powerful. She was mesmerizing anytime she was on screen.

As for the fight scenes, well... wow. I mean, really, WOW! The complexity of the final fight between Dee and the person he figures out committed the crime made fight scenes in the Bourne series look like child's play. Seriously. Now, there was wire work - I know some people really dislike that stuff in Kung Fu style movies, but it really worked in this setting. I hope people will give this one a chance. I really thought Detective Dee was fantastic!

This is a visually sumptuous and stunning-looking film by Tsui Hark who has directed or produced some of the classic Hong action films of the last 25 years. The Hark films I've seen, which often have great fight sequences, are hit and miss in terms of the cohesiveness of the stories, though when they work the films can be fabulous (Peking Opera Blues, the Once Upon A Time In China, series, etc.)

This period film has an interesting mystery at its heart with lots of red herrings and twists. The story follows Detective Dee as he's brought out of his political imprisonment to investigate a series of murders during the lead-up to the coronation of the first female Emperor. There some plot inconsistencies and problems, but they're small. The lead actors are all very good, including Andy Lau, Bingbing Li, Carina Lau, and Chao Deng. All in all, it's a compelling film not overloaded with action-for-the-sake-of-action that looks at an interesting period in China's history.

As far as wire trick movies go... this was actually rather good in my opinion. I really enjoyed the action scenes, the maneuvers seemed rather plausible and life like, no major glitches or hang ups, and for once you couldn't see the wires (big yay there!) As for the story plot.... neh not that real impressed, I got hung up a lot with story line, about surviving the shot through the chest... with the fire beetles, with the fight scenes that defy gravity and all that.

Characters were interesting... Not sure what to make of the acupuncture/transformation bit. Kind of weirded me out, although it wasn't the worst thing I've ever seen.

As for the name... I think its rather lame and/or something got lost in the translations.

Over all this was an interesting movie, though I'm not sure I'd watch it again.

In 689 A.D., the Empress Wu Zetian (Carina Lau) is building a 66 m high statue of Buddha for her inauguration as the first empress of China under the objections and conspiracy of the other clans.

When the engineer responsible for the construction mysteriously dies with a spontaneous combustion of his body, the superstitious workers are afraid since the man removed the good luck charms from the main pillar. There is an investigation of Pei Donglai (Chao Deng) and another investigator that also dies after withdrawing the amulets.

Empress Wu assigns her loyal assistant Shangguan Jing'er (Li Bing Bing) to release the exiled Detective Dee (Andy Lau) from his imprisonment to investigate with Donglai and Jing'er the mystery of the deaths. They ride in a mystic and epic adventure to unravel the mystery.

"Di Renjie" is a mystic and melodramatic adventure with a magnificent cinematography and wonderful choreography of fights. However, the plot entwines action with moments of soap-opera that might be culturally appreciated by Asian viewers, but absolutely boring and breaking the pace of the first-half of the film. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Detetive D e o Império Celestial" ("Detective D and the Celestial Empire")