Cha wu ci xin

The story is interesting and the plot pulls you in even though it's not exactly surprising in terms of who did what, to whom and why. This is, in the end, a pretty standard "whodunnit". Found the actors' portrayal of the characters quite good and ended up researching more of their work precisely because of it. I was a bit annoyed by how incompetent the main character came across at times but thought I'd give her the benefit of the doubt since she was going through emotional trauma and pain. That being said, her boss was way more patient than most would have been. The younger police officer was funny and charming so I enjoyed their adding her to the story for a bit of an edge.

This Taiwanese police procedural is a dull, lifeless film that simply goes through the motions without reaching any discernible high points.

It begins with the usual hook for this genre: a serial killer makes life hard for a depressed detective, who has to come to terms with herself while chasing the madman with the help of her rookie colleague. That would be fine if the plot presented at least a few fresh ingredients throughout the runtime, but it just settles into a predictable rut and never manages to lift above it.

I can't quite say this is a terrible film since it is competently shot and acted well enough, I guess. But the writing is unexceptional, and even pretty weak at times, given that a few scenes come across as comical when they were obviously meant to be serious. Absolutely no surprises or interesting character work are at store for the viewer, and I believe that won't cut it for many genre fans.

It is available on Netflix for anyone interested, but I wouldn't recommend it.

They could have toned down the frequency of those flashbacks, because there were too many and they literally ruined the movie for me, they were so inconsistent and at times unnecessary too breaking the flow of the movie. But yeah you can give this a shot and you might even love this because they have created a good dark atmosphere around the plot which is really captivating and it compliments the story well. You may find the central reason of the plot (as to why the killer is killing) to be too silly but yeah the atmosphere that was created and the acting overshadows it. If you're looking for a decent serial killer mystery this is worth looking into.

I was expecting a decent crime thriller but instead I got me some incompetent and plain stupid police and some rather unlikeable victims' circle type characters. The whole plot rests on people acting stupid and impulsively. And in all honesty in real life they probably would not have caught the guy and got themselves killed one way or another by the way they're carrying on. I do love a vigilante type of cop but that's a whole genre and you gotta do it right. The traumatized cop is also a genre of its own, but this is not it.

Anyway, the killer bothered me too, I did not buy the motivation, his origin story, the reason he became unhinged. It doesn't seem strong enough. He also gets too many lucky breaks, or like I said, the guys in pursuit are just plain dumb exposing themselves like that. It's just unimaginative writing. The visuals are good enough, the acting is decent, we just needed better characters and story. Give this to the Scandinavians, they'll make a masterpiece of noir thriller. I mean they probably already made this movie.

I am struggling here whether to give this movie a four star rating or five star, I know it maybe some new here in between.

I saw this Netflix last night after reading it was a way above average thriller which unfortunately was not true.

Now don't get me wrong, the film was good and I did enjoy it but the whole movie itself was tense enough for it to be very good.

Some of the scenes came across as comical when they were not meant to be, I think if the pace of the movie had been slower and more tension was out into some scenes then we would be talking about a six or seven star rating.

Overall worth a watch and then forget about it.