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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
DETECTIVE DEE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE PHANTOM FLAME The poster for Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, a kung fu whodunit that plays like a
conflicted love letter to the Chinese Communist Party, would be 100 percent accurate if it made proper use of italics.
It gushes, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon meets Sherlock Holmes.” That’s true, but they don’t mean Sherlock Holmes, the beloved character created by Arthur
Conan Doyle in short stories that will be read as long as the English language endures, but rather Sherlock Holmes, Guy Ritchie’s 2009 cinematic sin.
Like Holmes, Dee is busy, oddball, and boring, with a mystery that fails to really come together.
But it begins well. Set in 7th century China, the tale, based on Robert van Gulik’s 20th century “Judge Dee” novel series (in turn based on a real-life Tang Dynasty
investigator), opens when two senior officials are bizarrely murdered—they spontaneously combust after touching holy ribbons adorning a giant Buddha statute that’s
under construction.
To get to the bottom of the crimes, China’s ruthless and soon-to-be-crowned Empress Wu (Carina Lau) frees Dee (Hong Kong superstar and pop singer Andy Lau),
the kingdom’s craftiest judge, whom she had locked up in her dungeons for protesting her rule. She assigns him the case, but also makes sure the dissident detective
is watched over by her loyal stooge, Shangguan Jing’er (Bingbing Li), who inevitably becomes his love-and-sparring interest. Their courtship involves rolling around semi-naked while dodging assassins’ arrows.
Lots of folks, including a bad-ass albino magistrate (Chao Deng, deserving his own movie) aiding Dee in his quest, think the officials were killed by a Buddhist curse. But Dee knows better, and his investigations take them on a mythical Chinese mystery tour, leading them through, for instance, an underground city peopled with six-armed lute players. These scenes will pleasantly remind you of, if you’re my age, Big Trouble in Little China, or if you’re younger, maybe Hellboy II and its troll markets. It’s all pretty bizarre actually, with talking deer, magical beetles, shape-shifting enemies, and kung fu-fighting clockwork robots.
Dee has imagination to spare, but not much sense, and as the mystery unravels, so does the film, becoming increasing goofy and convoluted. Director Tsui Hark, who shook up the action scene in the 1980s and ’90s with his martial arts choreographer, the legendary Sammo Hung, manages to stage some decent fights early on. But midway through, the battles become so outlandish they bring to mind the campy decadence of 1980s Shaw Brothers films. There is, for instance, an episode—my nominee for the Strangest Scene in Cinema 2011—where Dee takes on a herd of murderous, computed-animated deer. Overall, the filmmaking begins to sour as soon as the story goes off the rails, with sweeping, majestic shots replaced with lots of cheap-looking video and tons of made for cable-quality CGI backdrops.
And like some other recent neo-martial arts flicks, such as Hero, there’s an uncomfortable, our-rulers-are-bad-but-it’s-for-the-best political subtext. You see, the empress is portrayed as a selfish, double-crossing monster, which is why Dee went to jail opposing her succession. But by the end, she’s a fiend Dee comes to respect. Under her rule, it turns out, the country’s at peace, and the long years of poverty and famine are no more. She’s evil, but at least she brings prosperity—just like, perhaps the filmmakers are saying, some other rulers we know. Brendon Nafziger
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