Mad Detective (15.)
Directed by Johnnie To & War Ka Fai.
Starring Lau Ching Wan, Andy On, Kelly Lin, Lam Ka Tung. Cantonese with subtitles. 89 mins.
Calling a movie Mad Detective is much like calling it Violent Cop: you're setting the bar very high. Bun (Lau Ching Wan) is not mad in the irate sense, but in the absolutely barking sense. He's Physic Holmes, able to solve cases without even requiring deduction but just by putting himself in the victim's shoes, even if that means being buried alive. Of course, he gets thrown off the force for being crazy until an ambitious young officer asks him to consult on the case of a missing copper.
The film's visual gimmick is that Bun can see the inner person and on screen we flip between seeing the real person and Bun's image of them. Or in one case, images; the chief suspect has seven different inner personalities who alternate or sometimes march down the street together like a gang from West Side Story.
The movie throws the viewer around all over the place but it is deliriously entertaining and it doesn't overstay its welcome: just when you think it might be about to get boring and become a conventional cop drama it springs you into the ending, a riff on the Hall of Mirrors shoot out in The Lady From Shanghai.
Good luck to Hollywood if they try and remake this – it'll need a synthesis of Abel Ferrara and David Lynch to even get close.
Directed by Johnnie To & War Ka Fai.
Starring Lau Ching Wan, Andy On, Kelly Lin, Lam Ka Tung. Cantonese with subtitles. 89 mins.
Calling a movie Mad Detective is much like calling it Violent Cop: you're setting the bar very high. Bun (Lau Ching Wan) is not mad in the irate sense, but in the absolutely barking sense. He's Physic Holmes, able to solve cases without even requiring deduction but just by putting himself in the victim's shoes, even if that means being buried alive. Of course, he gets thrown off the force for being crazy until an ambitious young officer asks him to consult on the case of a missing copper.
The film's visual gimmick is that Bun can see the inner person and on screen we flip between seeing the real person and Bun's image of them. Or in one case, images; the chief suspect has seven different inner personalities who alternate or sometimes march down the street together like a gang from West Side Story.
The movie throws the viewer around all over the place but it is deliriously entertaining and it doesn't overstay its welcome: just when you think it might be about to get boring and become a conventional cop drama it springs you into the ending, a riff on the Hall of Mirrors shoot out in The Lady From Shanghai.
Good luck to Hollywood if they try and remake this – it'll need a synthesis of Abel Ferrara and David Lynch to even get close.
