Mad Detective

"Mad Detective" starts promisingly. It shows that Johnny To has hit on a premise that allows his movie to not make sense without that perhaps being too much of a problem. However it falls apart towards the end and becomes just as maddeningly obtuse as all his other movies, the novel starting point hurting the movie in the final act.

Bun is a detective with a supernatural gift - or is he just crazy? - that lets him see a person's "true personality". He is fired after he cuts off his own ear and tries to give it to his superior.

Some time later, a policeman has gone missing and his gun has been used in murders. Bun is tracked down to find the culprit.

Most of the above I had to check Wikipedia to find out. I remember the ear cutting bit, the fact that Bun has a "gift", and some of the other stuff. That's the thing with Johnnie To: details of crimes the characters are investigating and the motivations of the characters are always really sketchy, and the ending always requires you to understand stuff you don't.

I think the problem with "Mad Detective" is its style. At first you feel liberated when you realise much of what you see on screen isn't supposed to be real and probably isn't supposed to make sense. You're seeing what the Mad Detective, Bun, sees. But in the end you realise you actually needed to be able to tell the difference between the real and the fake, and the movie doesn't give you enough help in this regard. There should have been a clear stylistic difference between the figments of Bun's imagination and those things that exist outside of his mind, or his second sight.

What felt like an illuminating device only ended up adding more confusion than the usual To film.

Johnnie To and Ka-Fai Wai have reinvented the detective genre and things will probably never be the same.

Inspector Ho is stumped by the disappearance of a detective 18 months earlier.Desperate for a break he looks to Bun, a genius profiler with whom he briefly worked years before...when Bun went crazy and was thrown off the force. A funny, tense un-nerving cop drama where nothing is certain. Is Bun a genius or crazy? Has Ho lost his mind? Where will it all end? Its a trip. I'd tell you more but I'm still trying to process what I saw since things shift from our reality to Bun's, often so its not clear. Its a trip and then some. Actually I'd be very surprised if this film doesn't end up with a cult following, an American remake and lots of articles written about it. Its just a nifty little thriller.

Definitely worth a viewing or two.

This is one of those scarce movies that might seem erratic until you get to the ending, where everything just clicks and all the pieces form one remarkable narrative.

To say that the ending blew me away is an understatement; it retroactively gives so much more meaning to Inspector Ho's role in the movie. This is how you create subversion. Instead of you groaning at his foolishness for doubting Bun, you are shocked by how the ending complements the initial storyline of corrupt cops and their egos, who will do anything to protect themselves.

Bun's ability to see personalities is captivating both visually and narratively. There are so many bizarre and impulsive interactions, especially with the seven that Ko Chi-wai has. I wish more of them were highlighted; a couple of them don't even say a word. It really feels like they are supposed to represent the seven deadly sins, but alas, not enough time was given to them.

Johnnie To & Wai Ka-Fai's Mad Detective is a film that turns the Hong Kong crime genre upon it's head. Based around the simple concept of a man that can see everyone's hidden persona's, Mad Detective is anything but formulaic and right from the very start dissuades any notion that this is just another flashy HK crime flick. Lau Ching-Wan stars as the eponymous Mad Detective, Inspector Chan Kwai-Bun, a brilliant detective forced into retirement when his methods and actions become a little too bizarre. Alongside him Andy On plays young Inspector Ho who tries to enlist the aid of retired Inspector Bun to solve a complex murder case involving a missing police officer and a suspect with multiple personalities.

What follows is a highly ingenious, highly inventive and above all, highly entertaining piece of cinema. Paced perfectly, this viewer sat on the edge of his seat, intrigued and enthralled in equal measure and delighting and the simple, unrestrained freshness of this film and it's premise. Lau Ching-Wan plays his part exceptionally well as the oddball Inspector Bun, throwing all semblance of logic out of the window as he investigates the case, but it's a straight faced performance; there's no comedy here as the plot and it's characters take themselves very seriously. However, despite this it's hard not to find humour in some of the scenes involving multiple personalities, and whether this was the directors intent or not, it does provide a handful of light hearted moments that help to break up this complex and down-right weird film into more palatable pieces.

Overall, if you're looking for a crime film that's as inventive and intriguing as it is enjoyable, you can't go wrong with Mad Detective. See it now before Hollywood does an inevitable remake.

Mad Detective had been touted as the long awaited re-team of Johnny To and Wai Ka Fai, who together have made Running on Karma back in 2003. The return of Lau Ching Wan to a To-Wai movie (since My Left Eye Sees Ghosts) is also more than welcome, and Mad Detective to me lived up to its hype, despite having certain obvious recycled elements from To's earlier films.

But this doesn't mean that the movie felt familiar. Sure, the iconic elements of a To movie were all there, including the saga of the missing police handgun, and the oh-so-stylish Mexican stand-offs (that we've seen in recent To movies in Exiled and Triangle) and the inevitable resolution, though how this one panned out, deserves the loudest of applause for its edge-of-your-seat-who-comes-out-unscathed revelation. And the end result is both satisfying, for a movie that had engaged through all its minutes, and yet frustrating, though the good thing was that there isn't any cop-out edits just to satisfy censors or sooth faux morals.

Mad Detective tells the story of Bun (Lau), who is termed as the title says because of his extremely unorthodox methods to solve crime - he re-enacts them at the very venues they are committed, getting into the minds of the criminals, and through this manner, able to identify who the perpetrator is. Needless to say his crime solving rate is high and he beocomes a legend, until a crazed moment saw him cut off his right ear to present to a departing boss, and with that, an early discharge letter from the Force.

The story fast forwards 5 years later, with detective Ho (Andy On) investigating a case of a missing cop and his gun, which was found to be used in a series of armed robberies. While suspicion is strong on the partner Chi-wai (Lam Ka Tung), there is absolutely no shred of evidence linking him to the crime. In his desperation, Ho turns to Bun, very much against protocol, and enlists his help in solving the case.

That's basically it, as we see in more detail what Bun's abilities are in depth. He's part profiler, part sage, and to many, all insanity with his constant talking to himself, and banged up attire sans socks. What I thought made it a close to perfect thriller, was that it constantly kept you guessing whether Bun is indeed what the title is, if it had taken a leaf out of Oxide Pang's creation of the C+ Detective with some supernatural moments, of if it was solely a disorder of the mind. If it shows you compelling evidence that you deem is a smoking gun, in no time are you presented with doubts that will cloud your judgement. You're given a glimpse of how the method in the madness works, and more often than not, find yourself second-guessing all the time, just like how Ho does.

And to that effect, I would warrant a guess that some in the audience will be left perplexed and confused, but my advice is not to give up on it. There are many wonderful moments especially when Bun's ability is fleshed out for the audience to see, and as such provided plenty of cameo appearances like Lam Suet and Cheung Siu Fai, playing personalities that were personifications of an inner man's thoughts, desires and fears. A pity though that not all personalities shown were provided screen time to do something more. A cautionary tale too about not judging a book by its cover, as even uncanny abilities to read a person might not be able to sniff out something that's regressive and well concealed, the true intentions of anyone.

Lau Ching Wan took a long hiatus before returning to the big screens here (since The Shopaholics, and the lovely My Name is Fame only made it straight to disc), and this comeback is nothing short of majestic in having him in his element, doing almost a one- man show if you will. You laugh at his antics, cry at his predicament in being so dogged in his persistence, admire his unorthodox methods and philosophy approaching investigations (to use emotions), yet cry along in pity when you suspect he's slowly degenerating into madness. Lau has charisma enough to make you empathize with his Bun, into a character you root for, despite his obvious difference. Andy On holds his own as the greenhorn investigator well enough in scenes opposite Lau, while Lam Ka Tung is just plain menacing as the accused, expressing his frustration in being the prime suspect, being both the cat and the mouse in the hunt for the truth.

What I admire about the movie, is how a simple idea can be branched into something complex, but yet within grasp, so hats off to the writing-directing team of To and Wai Ka Fai. In essence, this is a story that is told with its cards close to its chest, providing great balance in letting the multiple cats out of the bag at the right time. Simply superb!