Movie Review: Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame is a Hong Kong Action/Mystery film released in 2010 and directed by Tsui Hark. The story is about Di Renjie (Andy Lau), a celebrated official of the Tang Dynasty, tasked by Empress Wu Zetian (Carina Lau) to solve a series of deaths via spontaneous human combustion.

I was surprised to learn that this movie is inspired by an 18th century Chinese detective novel Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, the English translation published in 1949. This stuff really goes back. It's a pretty interesting bit of trivia but the movie has little to do with the book.

Empress Wu Zetian is about to ascend to the imperial throne. Of course she has political enemies, even more so since she's a woman. A woman as head of state was unprecedented at the time. In honor of her coronation, a giant statue of Buddha is constructed and things hit a snag when one of its designers suddenly bursts into flames.

Aaaaaaahhh!

I was already interested with the idea of a detective movie set in Imperial China, but the opening mystery of people inexplicably exploding into fireballs got my attention.

So what's causing all these government officials to go to an early fiery retirement? This looks like a job for master detective Dee who, by the way, has been locked up in prison for the last eight years on charges of treason. Hey, it's no big deal. I love scenes where heroes are summoned from retirement/confinement to do a job only they can do. The Empress doesn't seem to mind letting him have a crack at it. On his part, Dee has no hard feelings since the whole affair was not borne of personal animosity to the empress but out of his concern for the state. That's how you can tell who's the hero in Chinese films.

The movie isn't all sleuthing and deducing. There's plenty of kung-fu action to go around and it's pretty damn good. The fight choreography was arranged by Sammo Hung so this is no third-rate movie we're talking about here. This is a blockbuster style movie with a big budget to match. The visuals are great to look at, the setting is rich, and the costumes are eye-catching, especially the empress' outrageous robes and hairdos.

You know who's in charge.

The CGI is... good enough. While CGI is a necessity for movies nowadays and allows movie makers to show stunning visuals they could not otherwise practically create, the problem is always if the CGI will age well or "hold up" in time. For the most part, the CGI in this movie is good. There may be some problems in certain areas. Without spoiling too much, there's a scene where Dee interacts with a bunch of animals. But overall, the CGI is good. It's not distracting and serves the movie well.

It's interesting that the movie is not fantastical. What I mean by that is that there's no magic spells, ghosts, chi energy, or any of that kind of stuff. In fact, one of the themes of the movie is Dee's dismissal of supernatural causes of events in favor of more rational explanations. The movie is presented with a sort of realness to it, until you get to the fight scenes that is. Oh, the fight scenes. It's all well and good to talk about logic and reason but when it comes time to throw down, people are leaping sixty feet in the air, spinning, twirling, and kicking logs at each other. Surprisingly, the movie doesn't suffer for this. This is pretty much a thing you can hand-wave away in Chinese cinema. "Wire-fu" is a convention of the genre. Their ludicrous feats of martial skills are not meant to be seen as a sort of magic ability but rather, as a way to enhance the characters. It makes them seem important, like mythical characters out of an epic tale. It fits. A more visceral, realistic take on fight scenes a la The Raid would not have worked.

Detective Dee is not working alone though. The empress sends her favorite officer Jing'er (Li Bingbing) to keep an eye on Dee.

Jing'er

She's not exactly a romantic interest but more of a foil. She's an annoyance to Dee, naturally, but she can kick ass and is super serious towards her duties to her mistress. Dee and Jing'er frequently get sassy and sarcastic to each other, which is entertaining. Another character, and my personal favorite, is Pei (Chao Deng).

My boy, Pei.

He's a police official who has white hair, wears all black, wields an axe, and has a perpetual scowl on his face. He's so edgy, I love it. He's more independent minded than Jing'er and is willing to accept explanations that may not be pleasant to hear for those in the imperial court. The main cast play off each other well but the star is of course Dee, the Sherlock Holmes who puts together the clues and pursues the leads.

Dee inspects the evidence.

But don't think this is a movie where the audience can "play along". You won't spot the answer early on or anything. The mystery unravels in an orderly manner. It's still fun nonetheless, to follow the heroes as they uncover the truth. The pacing is good and the movie kept my attention all throughout.

Overall, it's a pretty good movie and worth checking out.

Axel F

Thinking Positive

Instead of writing about how bad the quarantine has been, why don't I point out some positive things. After all, my mother always advised me to be more upbeat and not dwell on negativity.

I think that it's great that there are little to no people in the streets. I admit it. I think it's awesome.

I took a short walk in the park today and nobody was there. It was so quiet and peaceful. There were no loud, annoying people bringing along their pesky children and dumb pets. There were no young people blowing cigarette smoke or irritating foreigners. It was heaven. It was as how a park should be. Not a piece of trash, human or otherwise, was in sight.

The restaurants across the street from where I live have been closed since the start of the quarantine. This means that there were no hired bands playing their terrible music and keeping me awake at night. What a blessing. I've been sleeping so good. I hope they all went bankrupt and will never ever open again. 

If you do run into people, they keep things short and quickly go about their business. For once, there's no need for idle chit-chat. How pleasant. Recently, a man politely refused to ride the elevator with me and decided to wait for the next one. At that moment, I was ecstatic. After the euphoria died down, I treated myself to some otap and a glass of room temperature water.

Best of all, wearing a mask means that I don't have to force myself to smile.

Oingo Boingo - Little Guns

Writing

It is said that one doesn't know what he thinks until he has to write it down. Judging by the sorry state of this blog, it seems I'm at a loss and I freely admit that.

I believe I owe the handful of people who actually read this blog an explanation as to why I haven't been writing anything lately and by lately, I mean more than a year. To put it simply, I've come to a point in my life where I'm not sure of anything anymore. I can't explain exactly why or pinpoint the exact time when I ceased to become confident of anything I put to print. But every time I sit down and tell myself that I need to post something, my mind is just a blank. Why?

This may sound crazy but I think most of the things in life presented as truth is a lie or at least only partly true. This uncertainty scrambles my brain, clouds my thoughts, and stops me from writing more than a few sentences before I give up. It's as if I have no confidence at all to the point that I can't even put it down in some blog nobody reads.

As I look at my older posts, it disgusts me. What the hell did I know way back when I was a college student? How could I have known what hell the world would mutate into today?

I wish there was a word for this.

But after giving it some thought, I think the problem is that I feel the need to write something "big", or something to weigh in on the important subjects of the day or society at large. But now I cannot. It feels like lying. I can't possibly know how things really. I can only observe what's in front of me and no ordinary man has the power to peer behind to curtains.

Perhaps it's time to think smaller and shrink the world. Not that I need any help, the world seems to be shrinking fast lately. Or maybe it's time to just stop caring so much and shoot straight. 

Or maybe I should stop navel-gazing about writing and just do it.