Détective Dee II : La Légende du dragon des mers

Young Detective Dee is the adventures of a youthful Sherlock in Medieval China with state of the art CGI and a sea monster.

The film starts with warships sent by Empress Wu destroyed by an unseen monster. Young Dee arrives in the capital city intending to become a detective with the Da Lisi police force. He already has a rival in Yuchi.

However there is another monster attacking the city linked with a courtesan. Dee links up with a medic to find answers and gets the attention of the Empress.

The film is fragmented with many plot lines, its a while before we see Yee's ability in detective work. What we do get is a sprawling adventure with gargantuan set pieces mixed with impressive CGI and some sly humour.

At times the action overpowers the film which could had done been with being more concise. In some sense Young Dee is overshadowed in his own movie.

It is still an impressive introduction of recent Chinese action- adventure cinema.

There are plenty of entertaining action scenes in this movie, ranging from wire fu fighting to large scale CGI-monster fighting. These are imaginatively filmed and have some nice touches, even if here's nothing as good as the best action scenes from the previous Detective Dee movie, Phantom Flame.

In between action, there is a very poorly told story.

Actually, "story" is an exaggeration. It's more like a collection of incidents told in a particularly order. Everything just kind of happens. A ship battle results in disaster! A woman in a mask is in trouble! There's a merman! There are bandits! There's a new detective! There's a swimming horse! There are poison flowers! Everything is introduced by someone just saying, here is this thing that we need right now.

There's a general rule in film that if the hero is going to pull out a gun in the final act, you want to establish that he owns a gun earlier on. That doesn't happen in this movie. Instead, there's a problem, and suddenly someone says, I know who can help, or, I've got the solution right here, or, the solution is at this place let's go right now.

This is how a ten-year-old writes a story.

No character development, little motivation, no real coherence. Dee's Sherlock Holmes deductions are generally unpersuasive.

It's a dumb story, badly told, but the action scenes almost make up for that. Almost.

The vase is beautiful and the music is pleasant. Unfortunately, besides pretending to be mysterious, the story has no trap at all, that is, telling a story in a straight line. In other words, the best part of the film is the sketch of the ending story. If it's all finished, it's really a big series.

Tsui Hark is back again with his latest fantasy-action-drama-adventure-thriller epic - Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon, which serves as a prequel to Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame released in 2010.

The film tells how the young Dee rise to become a respectable detective for the Tang Dynasty, befriends the doctor Shaluo (similar to Sherlock Holmes and Watson) and his rival, Chief Commissioner/Detective Yuchi, unravels and solves an intriguing mystery case which involves a plot to assassinate the royal family and palace officials to overthrow the entire kingdom.

In order to fully enjoy the film, it requires some suspension of disbelief from the audience for some of the fantasy or action elements shown in the film such as riding a horse underwater, 'Kraken' beast, parasites that can change a person's looks and behaviour entirely, flying around fighting in the air, etc.

Although the wire-action choreography was great and well handled throughout the film, but the action scenes gets a little too much and it feels tedious to watch as the film moves on. It took away the focus of the mystery plot and a lot of potential character development required in the film. However, most of the lead and supporting actors did a fine job in portraying their character roles.

The CGI has improved a lot and looked believable and realistic compared with past Chinese big budget films. Overall, it's still a watchable, entertaining Chinese big budget production comparable to Hollywood standards.

"Di Renjie: Shen Du Long Wang" or "Young Detective Dee: Rise Of The Sea Dragon" is a prequel to "Detective Dee And The Mystery Of The Dragon Flame". It takes place in the beginning years of Tang Dynasty under the reign of the weak Emperor Gaozong and just a few years before his cruel wife Wu Zetian would take his position and declare the second Zhou dynasty for fifteen years. This second movie shows us a young detective who arrives at the imperial city and has to face a lot of adversary, jealousy and mistrust. The case itself features two different story lines. First of all, there is a giant sea monster controlled by a mysterious enemy that attacks the imperial fleet. The other story features the beautiful courtesan Yin who is about to be sacrificed in order to appease the Gods and therefor the sea monster but who gets first kidnapped by a gang of thieves and later on by a strange human lizard creature. Both stories are loosely bound together and lead the detective and his new colleagues and friends to an adventurous mission on Bat Island.

If you liked the first movie of the franchise, my guess is that you will also appreciate the sequel. It's really a matter of nuance if you prefer the first or the second movie as both pretty much have the same flaws and strengths. Just as the first instalment, the sequel convinces with elegant and typically exaggerated fighting scenes in Tsui Hark's unique signature style that goes back to classic Hongkong movies of the late eighties and early nineties like "A Chinese Ghost Story" or "Once Upon A Time In China". I must admit that the over-the-top fighting scenes on the ships towards the end of the movie are probably the most impressive sequences of both movies.

The modern elements can be found in several decent CGI effects for the monsters in this movie as well as during the destruction of the fleet and the showdown on and around Bat Island. I must admit that I thought that some of these modern elements did not fit to the historical settings which are colourful and beautiful to watch but not always authentic. It's simply strange to see ultra-modern visual elements in a movie that takes place in the seventh century. I prefer the more limited but authentic settings of more traditional Hongkong movies.

While the first movie had some more investigative elements, the sequel only features a couple of these. Detective Dee surely passes as a smart person and some of his investigative methods are still really impressive. Sadly, the movie quickly reveals friends and foes which means that there aren't any real mysteries to solve. The only element I would have liked to know isn't really answered after all. We don't get to know how the sea monster was created and how comes that it sometimes obeys the villains and sometimes it doesn't.

As for the acting, the leading actors do an average job as some of them lack depth. Angela Yeung is simply a good-looking woman in love with a poet, that's it. The makers of the movie could have chosen any of the many good-looking Chinese actresses as Angela Young's character lacks uniqueness and feels like a hollow puppet to me. The jealous chief minister portrayed by Feng Shaofeng, the young prison doctor played by Lin Gengxin as well as Detective Dee himself who is now portrayed by Taiwanese-Canadian actor Mark Chao instead of Hongkong actor Andy Lau who was a little bit more charming in my opinion, all have interesting characteristics but remain somewhat superficial. Instead of focusing on special effects, the makers of the movie should have worked a little bit more on the character development.

This sequel is a colourful, effect-ridden, fast-paced movie that doesn't fail to entertain and which includes a few impressive investigative methods, beautiful settings and stunning fighting scenes. On the other side, the story is much simpler than in the first film and the actors are mostly exchangeable or stereotypical as in the case of the crazy doctor for example. Fans of modern Hongkong cinema and historical fiction where traditional elements are overrun by modern effects will like this movie. Everyone else is invited to watch this fun ride once but more sophisticated viewers will probably forget about this film pretty soon. I still think that the concept behind this franchise has some potential and hope that there will be a third movie and that's why I'm willing to rate this film seven points instead of only six.