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Takashi Miike’s ‘Detective Story’ is an entertaining and impressively well-made genre offering, one that expertly blends mystery, comedy and horror.

Raita Kazama is a down to his luck detective. During a night of drinking with his new neighbor, who also carries the name Raita, he receives a visit from a young woman who wants his help. Kazama, who at the time happens to be heavily intoxicated, tells her to come over the next morning. When he wakes up, he discovers that not only the woman has been murdered but that he is also a prime suspect in the case. What follows is a series of bizarre murders that Raita decides to investigate with the help of his neighbor.

The plot may sound a bit overly familiar and that’s probably because it is and the fact that a bloody genre film comments on the violent nature...

Early on in Detective Story, there’s a scene where the title character bumps into his secretary on the street. He’s working undercover (which consists solely of an awful wig; he hasn't changed from his typically flamboyant outfit), but she recognizes him anyway. She’s on her lunch break, on her way back to her day job at a market research firm. “Why don’t you try getting one?” she asks him. “You can make a lot more money in this line.” “There are more important things in life than money,” he answers, shaking out his fake locks.

In this moment, we get the essence of Takashi Miike’s art: A scene familiar from so much genre cinema becomes a meeting place of the ludicrous and the surprisingly heartfelt. As funny as Kazuya Nakayama is in this scene (doing a broad-comic variation on the bumbling detective character), the mention...