Détective Dee : Le mystère de la flamme fantôme

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!

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.

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")

Di Renjie zhi tongtian diguo or Detective Dee and the mystery of the phantom flame is a Chinese fantasy movie that takes place during the Zhou Dynasty when the first and only Chinese empress Wu Zetian started her reign. The cold, cruel and somewhat megalomaniac woman that wants to rule on her own accord and who killed several potential enemies in the past is now menaced days before her crowning. After the mysterious death of two people during the construction of a giant Buddha statue in front of the emperor's residence, she asks the Chaplain, a sort of state preceptor who speaks through a magical deer, for help. He gives her the advice to recruit the banned Detective Dee who had openly accused the empress for having possibly killed her late husband and who was one of the leading persons in a growing revolution eight years ago. Even before Detective Dee can be contacted, a group of assassins tries to kill him and another prisoner but they ultimately fail. Intrigued by the strange murders and the will to make peace with his past, Detective Dee soon discovers that black magic seems to be the cause of the deaths. Accompanied by the empress' charming but mysterious attendant and an albinistic officer in the penal system, Detective Dee has to put the pieces of the puzzle together before the crowning of the empress takes place and soon discovers a well organized conspiracy with the goal to kill the empress.

This movie has a historic background that is though not developed in a profound way. The film rather focuses on fantastic elements around black magic, a few mild suspension moments and a couple of artistic action choreographies done by some of the best experts of several outstanding Hongkong action movies of the late eighties and early nineties. This film though wastes a little bit of potential on here as it turns out to be too diversified to truly convince in any of the genres it touches and as it lacks of a few more developed cultural and historical bits and pieces that would make the final result more authentic.

Apart of the action choreographies, a true highlight are definitely the buildings, costumes and masquerades in the movie that were created in a very precise and professional way as it often happens to be in contemporary Chinese movies. On the other side, the special effects are less impressive and often to artificially flavoured so that they destroy the movie's certain kind of magic a few times. That's where Hollywood is still slightly ahead of modern Asian cinema.

While the story of this movie definitely has a few good points and a couple of small twists as well, there are still some negative factors. One never really gets to know why the two persons in the beginning of the movie really had to die instead of killing the empress in an unexpected way during her crowning. The movie also has a few anachronisms such as way too modern ships in the harbour and the diplomat in the beginning of the film whose identity and role remains strangely unresolved. These flaws are pardonable if you take this movie as a fictional film only.

In the end, you get an entertaining fantasy movie with a solidly suspenseful story, well done choreographies and stunning costumes. The movie though has no truly innovating elements, surprising moments or touching scenes. It has without a doubt a certain kind of magic after all but it is sometimes too professionally done to touch the people. This movie is rather ordinary in comparison to what the gifted director Tsui Hark has done in the past but it's still one of the more entertaining Asian movies from 2010. After all, I guess I would only recommend this film to long time fans of Asian cinema as well as of stunning costumes and artistic choreographies. I would go for a loan instead of an immediate purchase as the film is surely entertaining but nothing outstanding enough to be a worthy addition to a film collection of an Asian cinema maniac.

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.