Detective Dee: Came With A high promise For a New Franchise

Famous Hong Kong movie director who has a list of well-received martial arts flicks in his credit, Tsui Hark, is coming back with an all- star historical martial arts suspense thriller – “Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame”. Starring a stellar cast also featuring the action choreography by Sammo Hung, though the title sounds like the latest installment of the “Harry Potter” series, but this film seems really exciting especially after the trailers out and they indeed looks truly alive and kicking and are able to boggle our tender mind. Based on the iconic figure of Di Renjie, known as Judge Dee to Western audiences, a legendary minister of state in the Tang Dynasty (618 – 907 AD) who was known for his ability to solve the most complicated cases, Detective Dee is also a uniquely appealing counterpart to the modern western equivalent, Sherlock Holmes. If Holmes was able to success via the re-imagining by British director Guy Ritchie, so why not Dee? Here Tsui attempt to blends fantasy with martial arts and special effects in a drama infused with love and intrigue that aims to create a complex but entertaining story around the historical character.


As the story initiate in 690AD at the city of Luoyang, Detective Dee (Andy Lau) has been jailed by the emperor's widow, Wu Zetian (Carina Lau), who is about to be crowned China's first empress. The momentous ceremony is to take place in the gloominess of an oversize Buddha sculpture, a marvel of architecture that is 200 feet high and still under construction. A visiting dignitary from abroad is given a guided tour inside the immense statue by one of the chief engineers. Its towering interior is dominated by a tall, treelike core, criss-crossed by bridges and movable mechanical parts. When the engineer and his guest arrive at the enormous eyes of the statue, a shocking incident transpires: the engineer, struck by sunlight, and like a vampire ruptures into flames and is burned alive from the inside out. The frightened workforce charge an olden curse and word is sent to the Empress that divine wrath is upon her coronation. The messenger himself is finalized in the same blazing destiny, as he is riding to the imperial court. At this point, Wu makes the elegant move of pardoning Dee, the barely person who can solve the vagueness. She sends her preferred, the attractive martial arts expert Jing'er (Li Bingbing), to pull him out of an infernal prison where Dee has labored for eight long years, burning citizens' petitions in a huge incinerator. Restored as a judge, he directly sets to work puzzling out the bizarre fatalities. Dee concludes that they're not mystical at all, but part of a convoluted scheme to rebel the future Empress. Along with Jing'er and unkind albino court officer Pei Donglai (Deng Chao), who have become his troubled partners, Dee goes beneath the ground to visit the Black City, an eccentric shadowy kingdom. Waylaying a peculiar old loner named Wang the Donkey, they seek information on the fearful Fire Turtles, scarab beetles that inject toxic into the body that causes it to burn up as soon as it comes into contact with sunlight. With one part of the secrecy cracked, the detective now ought to find out who’s behind it all. Leaping over underground lakes, the three have their first exciting fight with the Imperial Chaplain, an airborne red figure with outlandish abilities. # This one of the latest entries into martial arts genre brings such a freshness breeze as it’s neatly mingling the essentials of a mystery novel with the aesthetics of a period epic and fantasy cinema.

# Tsui Hark has never been unconfident about capturing pieces from other movies and furnishing them an eastern spin, and he does that again here with Sherlock Holmes but it’s somehow forgivable since what he smuggle in is so subversive.

# The action sequences choreographed by famous martial arts actor and director Sammo Hung are enjoyment to watch as they were inventive and fast-paced.

# Two most memorable and thrilling action sequences are in the underground city between Dee and the Imperial Chaplain and his possum of masked assassins and in the towering Buddha statue where the detective in final point unknots the despicable conspiracy in the climax.

# The picture really has these gorgeous visuals and beautifully executed special effects, the production design by James Chiu is so memorably imaginative.

# Sumptuous costume design and extravagant set also adds so much elegancies to the film and become such a wonderfully eye candies.

# What so much fun about the film comes from the investigation sequences when Dee trying to piece together the parts of the puzzle before the final reveal.

# Tsui has shaped his own fantasy world, Del Toro-esque creatures and set pieces that quite rich and fantastical without diverting from the intrigue and suspense of the film.

# An investigator, whose persona and work ethic reminiscent of the private eyes of the classic film noirs, Andy Lau is charismatic enough in Dee’s suit and provided the exact amount of intelligence, boldness and wit.

# Carina Lau is return to the acting world and devoted an impressive Machiavellian presentation as the Empress Wu Zetian.

# Still over complicated and over plotted in places but the plot is surprisingly coherent. Though sometimes interrupted by some of the very daydream forms of a talking deer, fire turtle, or facial transfiguration fantasy that allows a human being to assume two personas, yet Tsui and writer Chen Kuo Fu are able to keep the story grounded in realism that averts the film from down-warding into campiness.

# Some of the CGI at times is so artificial it looks like 3D animation such as the deer and the combustion shots in particular.

Overall score: 8/10 (A nonstop visual joy of narrative craftiness, production design, and martial-arts exhibition, “Detective Dee” is a return to fabulous form for Tsui Hark. The possibilities are very high for a next big franchise a la "Once Upon A Time in China")