DETECTIVE DEE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE PHANTOM FLAME (Tsui Hark). 123 minutes. Subtitled. Opens Friday (September 23). See listing. Rating: NNNN
Detective Dee And The Mystery Of The Phantom Flame is a thriller, an action movie, an effects-heavy mythical adventure and even a little bit of a love story. In short, it’s every sort of film director Tsui Hark has made in the past all rolled into one.
Set in a slightly fantastic seventh-century China where talking animals and gender transmogrification are taken in stride by the population, it feels at times like an Asian version of Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes. The eponymous sleuth (Andy Lau) is a hyper-competent martial arts master as well as a brilliant strategist and forensic investigator.
When the construction of a monastery is threatened by a series of mysterious deaths – people are bursting into flames with no apparent cause – Dee finds himself working with an enigmatic female warrior (Li Bingbing) and a hotheaded albino detective (Chao Deng) to solve the case before the coronation of China’s first empress (Carina Lau). Obviously, it’s not going to be easy.
As with most of Tsui’s films, any shortcomings in pacing and tone are made up for in enthusiasm and style. There’s enough plot for three features, and Lau is his usual dynamic self as the resourceful Dee. Tsui is finally learning to integrate digital effects into his movies rather than stopping the show to goggle at them the scale of the extended climax is pretty amazing.
