Detective Dee: Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010)

a few years after the huge success of tiger and dragon such a flood of "historical" Chinese movies followed that i stopped watching after House of Flying Daggers and Hero. Somehow i decided to watch Detective Dee nevertheless and must say i do not regret this. it is quite an achievement in visuals, acting and story. watching the improvement of CGI one can only compare it to the bunch of mega-million Hollywood movies and see how shallow they usually are.

this movie has actually an intriguing storyline and i liked the quality of the production; it has some, i'd say - quirks, but they should be related to the fact that the movie was created by a different culture than Europeans, so we can't understand completely all the movie has to say and how it says it.

still - worth seeing!; congratulations to the makers of the movie

Fmovies: It's simply an interest week of big budgeted film releases in Singapore, from India's Endhiran starring Superstar Rajinikanth and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, to the Asian martial arts film such as the John Woo produced Reign of Assassins, which is getting a special screening today before its release next week. Also, Tsui Hark joins the fray with his latest film Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, and if you like me, have wondered why Hark has made some astonishing lacklustre films of late, fret not folks, as this film marks the director's return to true class. Like the adage goes, form is temporary while class is permanent, and Detective Dee sounds that trumpet that he's back at his very best with this action adventure.

The scale of the film within its first ten minutes will win you over with its grandeur and ambition, and it sustained its stellar delivery at all fronts right up to the finale, keeping the mystery humming at the background, while constantly topping its action fight sequences from the previous. Set in the Tang Dynasty just before the coronation of Chinese history's legendary Empress Wu Zetian (Carina Lau), the mystery involves the self-immolation of court officials with whispers that the supernatural might be involved. All these strange happenings seem to point to a greater conspiracy that to skeptics go back to the Empress in waiting having a hand in them.

To show the masses that there is transparency in her governance, she releases on the advice of a wise sage, the Chinese Sherlock Holmes of her time, Detective Dee (Andy Lau) who she had imprisoned for challenging her rule to the throne some eight years ago. Reinstating his stature, she sets him about investigating these deaths, which spells an investigative adventure in a race against time to nab the culprits as well as to discover all hidden agendas that will go against the crowning of the very first female Emperor in China.

Tsui Hark, responsible for classics such as Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain in the 80s, the Once Upon a Time in China series in the 90s, have yet to convince me that he had kept up with the times and I was afraid that he may have lost a lot of his clout with the naysayers abhorring his previous offerings like All About Women (seriously) and Missing. Detective Dee will now shut these fellas up (and I will admit, myself included), as we celebrate the helmer's vision and offering for a new audience to acquaint themselves with. The engaging and fantastical storyline by Chen Kuo-fu (also responsible for The Message) got brought to live by a number of Korean special effects teams, that your jaw will literally be wide open when marvelling at the intricate details from miniatures employed, to the money special effects shots.

Even then, there's no mistaking that it's also loaded with enough fight action to entertain, thanks to the action direction of Sammo Hung, of late hugely responsible for many action/martial arts flicks that bear his signature, creating unique fighting styles and stances for the characters, utilizing weapons seldom seen in Chinese cinema of late such as the whip, a throwable war-axe and Dee's mace, which comes with a tuning fork of a device that can exploit weakness in metal and lead to the demolition of opposition weapons. You'll have to see it to believe, and that iconic mace forms a sort of Truth object as well, one of the tools Dee utilizes that actually strike fear into the hearts of his enemies.

Even with big sets and awesome c

Detective Dee is a real fun and solid movie with breath-taking cinematography from Tsui Hark, a pretty legendary filmmaker from Hong Kong.

It's is a bizarre martial arts fantasy mystery film (yes). The story is both taken from historical China and derived from a novel series (series, so look for sequels). It's a frequently zany mystery with tons of twists that might have your head spinning...or you might just be completely lost. Go with that feeling and expect it.

The story follows Detective Dee (Andy Lau) as he's brought out of imprisonment to investigate a series of murders during the lead-up to the coronation of the first female Empress of China (played by Carina Lau). The movie feels almost like a flurry of ridiculous events, which is pretty great and really different from anything that's coming out of Hollywood these days. To enjoy this movie, go in with an open mind and remember...it's in subtitles.

Detective Dee: Mystery of the Phantom Flame fmovies. There's some very good things to say about this film. Great set pieces, wonderful camera work and some very good actors. Colourful, historic and epic in its aims, with some great but not overly violent martial artistry.

Yet for all that it ticks off on the list, it's just not very engrossing.

The detective story is a bit convoluted and tries to marry magic, superstition, rationalism and surprise. Yet, it gets all a little too confusing and not something you can accept. I agree that you have to suspend disbelief, but you are meant to be figuring out the mystery and you just lose interest when some of the revelations are made. Some of it is clever but too left-field to admire.

This is just a disappointment. I just couldn't get into this, I watched to the end and was left just underwhelmed. As said, I liked a number of things about this film, yet the sum of its parts is definitely not less than the whole.

Di Renjie zhi tongtian diguo or Detective Dee and the mystery of the phantom flame is a Chinese fantasy movie that takes place during the Zhou Dynasty when the first and only Chinese empress Wu Zetian started her reign. The cold, cruel and somewhat megalomaniac woman that wants to rule on her own accord and who killed several potential enemies in the past is now menaced days before her crowning. After the mysterious death of two people during the construction of a giant Buddha statue in front of the emperor's residence, she asks the Chaplain, a sort of state preceptor who speaks through a magical deer, for help. He gives her the advice to recruit the banned Detective Dee who had openly accused the empress for having possibly killed her late husband and who was one of the leading persons in a growing revolution eight years ago. Even before Detective Dee can be contacted, a group of assassins tries to kill him and another prisoner but they ultimately fail. Intrigued by the strange murders and the will to make peace with his past, Detective Dee soon discovers that black magic seems to be the cause of the deaths. Accompanied by the empress' charming but mysterious attendant and an albinistic officer in the penal system, Detective Dee has to put the pieces of the puzzle together before the crowning of the empress takes place and soon discovers a well organized conspiracy with the goal to kill the empress.

This movie has a historic background that is though not developed in a profound way. The film rather focuses on fantastic elements around black magic, a few mild suspension moments and a couple of artistic action choreographies done by some of the best experts of several outstanding Hongkong action movies of the late eighties and early nineties. This film though wastes a little bit of potential on here as it turns out to be too diversified to truly convince in any of the genres it touches and as it lacks of a few more developed cultural and historical bits and pieces that would make the final result more authentic.

Apart of the action choreographies, a true highlight are definitely the buildings, costumes and masquerades in the movie that were created in a very precise and professional way as it often happens to be in contemporary Chinese movies. On the other side, the special effects are less impressive and often to artificially flavoured so that they destroy the movie's certain kind of magic a few times. That's where Hollywood is still slightly ahead of modern Asian cinema.

While the story of this movie definitely has a few good points and a couple of small twists as well, there are still some negative factors. One never really gets to know why the two persons in the beginning of the movie really had to die instead of killing the empress in an unexpected way during her crowning. The movie also has a few anachronisms such as way too modern ships in the harbour and the diplomat in the beginning of the film whose identity and role remains strangely unresolved. These flaws are pardonable if you take this movie as a fictional film only.

In the end, you get an entertaining fantasy movie with a solidly suspenseful story, well done choreographies and stunning costumes. The movie though has no truly innovating elements, surprising moments or touching scenes. It has without a doubt a certain kind of magic after all but it is sometimes too professionally done to touch the people. This movie is rather ordinary in comparison to what the gifted director Tsui Hark has done in the past but it's st

I loved many of Tsui Hark's epics from the 80s/90s, but haven't seen anything from the director recently, so I probably went in with fairly neutral expectations.

This was an enjoyable ride. Like others have noted, it's comparable to a Chinese "Sherlock Holmes" (the recent Guy Ritchie version), or a movie-length, Tang-dynasty-set "CSI". Overall, it was a rather original experience - more than I can say for most movies nowadays. There are several intriguing characters and the pace and acting are solid. While the central murder mystery - whodunnit and howdunnit - is not exactly a head-scratcher, it does provide a good structure for some exciting and beautiful visuals.

Was the CGI completely up to the director's vision? Definitely not, but to naysayers, I say, loosen up! The budget for this movie is less than that of a typical Jennifer Aniston romantic comedy! I appreciated and enjoyed the whole movie enough that I wasn't overly distracted by the not-so-special effects.