Detective vs. Sleuths

I was very into this movie for a while. The mystery is set up well and takes you on an intricate journey. Some of the action is pretty good and exciting. The lead actor gives a great performance. And I was invested in the main characters.

But the flaws killed it for me. The action becomes tedious and stale while also becoming outrageous and not believable. All the bullets miss. Early on I forgave this a couple times. But it keeps happening, and worse every time. Hundreds of bullets are shot and they keep missing.

Then you have other things like hilariously fake-looking blood spatter. Or other times when people get shot with no blood whatsoever. Or unrealistic CG fire.

I thought this was pretty good for a while and still has a lot of positives, but the negatives brought it way down for me. (1 viewing, 1/16/2023)

Detective vs. Sleuths, written and directed by Wai Kai Fai, is essentially a Milkyway film produced through the China-Hong Kong co-production machine. It is a bigger-budgeted, louder and dumbed-down police actioner that's constantly speeding to the next scene. Sean Lau is as always an engaging lead but is unfortunately sidelined as a cog in a larger formulaic machine.

As a string of brutal killings storms Hong Kong, Jun Lee, once a brilliant detective in the police force who was let go after a mental breakdown, conducts his own investigation the victims are all connected to his past cases. Yee Chan, a police detective who was a victim of one of the past cases, enlists Lee Jun's help to find the killer.

Sean Lau Ching Wan is easily the best part of the film. He plays a rehashed version of his lead role in The Mad Detective as a cop who solves crimes with supernatural abilities, which Lau improves upon by acting out the ghosts that converse with him. It's entertaining watching Lau's rapidly changing facial expressions talking to himself.

Charlene Choi tries her best but is unconvincing as a distinguished police detective. She overplays her character's vulnerability, looking like she's constantly on the verge of tears and not communicating an investigative mind solving the case at hand. On top of that, her character is pregnant and questionably partaking in dangerous action head-on. It is not more ridiculous than say running from a dinosaur in high heels, but it lacked conviction. In an interview, Choi was asked about her role preparation and said she was only told what to do on the day and thus what we see is her genuine reaction to everything.

Carman Lee is wasted as the police madam explaining the plot to the audience. Based on acting chops alone, I could picture Carman Lee doing a better job as the female lead if this was made back in the day.

Who had the final say on Detective vs. Sleuths? I'll never know. It plays like a movie made by its money backers cashing in with established formulae, which outweighs the creative parts of the script.

Wai Ka Fai sets up the mystery in an interesting way, but he is completely uninterested in exploring his own high concept. The rapid-paced editing never gives a moment to breathe or contemplate the crime. Most of all, the film repeatedly drowns itself in long monotonous shootouts that lack weight or consequence. The "pew pew pew" way the guns were fired, the bullets may as well have been orange rubber darts.

What the film tries to sell as depth is ridiculous. What father lovingly teaches her daughter Friedrich Nietzsche quotes in German?

I would recommend rewatching Mad Detective instead.

In 2007, Ka-Fai Wai wrote and co-directed, along with his much more internationally-famous colleague Johnnie To, the absurd crime thriller "Mad Detective", one of my all-time favourite films.

Now, after a 13-year absence from directing, Ka-Fai Wai is back, this time without Johnnie To or To's production company Milky Way, but with a film that seems like a new riff on "Mad Detective", almost a sequel. Ching Lan Wau is back, playing again an insane detective with some apparently supernatural crime-solving abilities lying underneath his madness.

It might sound derivative of the former film, but Detective vs Sleuths has some new tricks up its sleeve, and it honestly feels extremely fresh. Its twisty plot comes together beautifully in the end, the action scenes are some of the best in recent memory, and Ching Lan Wau's performance is bloody brilliant. His antics are crowd-pleasingly hilarious, but it never undermines the film's commitment to its increasingly outrageous narrative.

This film feels like a throw-back, to a level of creativity in Asian cinema that was much more common in the 2000s than what we've seen in the last decade. Certainly, I enjoyed this more than anything Johnnie To has directed since "Mad Detective". That film inspired me to check out more of Johnnie To's work, but now I'm realizing that Ka-Fai Wai deserves equal attention, and I'm very glad he's back after such a long absence.

I like the original promise to be a continuation for the first film but the mystery whether the lead character has special power or not was part of the charm, this sequel sadly ruined some of that.

Quite a number of surprises although some was a bit lame. Part of the stories felt forced and was shock for the sake out it, a some of the characters could do with a few more acting lessons from the lead actor.

The film really was saved by Lau Ching Wan alone, his portrait is so good it made it almost uncomfortable to watch.

Overall, I found the film entertaining enough and is one of the better hk films in recent years.

Instead of saying this is a detective story, it would rather be described as a creepy nonsense and full of shet talk.

The story writer focus too much on shaping a physical mad detective but completely ignore the basic reality of crime fiction presentations. For example, you would ask me to believe an female police officer would perform her job in crime scene where she have to chase, gun fight and building climbing when she is nearly at a stage of a childbirth? And you expect me to believe that Li Jun could be allowed to engage official crime investigation when he suffer severe mental health problem and risk all citizens and officers in life danger? Such nonsense just appeared all over the screen time and made people literally wonder what's going on with this movie.

Most of the character's motivations are simple, easy-predicated and some even ridiculous, which made people more easily to find that how unbelievable flat the character is. This is the kind of the story that you whish you never heard of. This is so....exhausted to watch. Once again, a new tip for myself: DO get out of it even in the middle of screening, when you find something funny is in the film. Instead of a crime fiction that you can enjoy, its more like those ridiculous Late talk show meme for spoof.