Blind Detective

IThe Blind Detective was fairly hard to follow as it jump scene to scene without really giving you a full explanation. We are also exploring multiple cases at once, so sometimes it becomes rather hard to know what case we are talking about. As a result the film becomes a bit convoluted. It is fairly entertaining for what it is (a silly overdramatic Hong Kong comedy]. Andy Lau does give a great performance, not afraid to make himself look wild.

If you want just a silly film with a bit of a mystery, check it out. It's not the worst, it's not the best.

If you like Johnnie To and Chinese cinema, stop reading now and watch this movie! Blind Detective is overt, obtuse, in your face entertainment. The story surrounds one missing persons investigation, but many mysteries are solved during the duration, none of it understated.

Reading the movie's plot summery, even I was slow to finally watch, but I should have known better! No quick description can prepare you for what this movie actually brings to the table. The main character's blindness is captured in a full visual manner, including his interaction with environments, and 'inner eye' sequences by which crimes are solved. The leading lady commissions our hero to help solve a personal mystery, but she is also an energetic detective in training who studies his crime solving process. In ways the story is very predictable, but the fun is in moment to moment details, and the absurdity of how the characters behave. Though Chinese, the loud, exaggerated acting has an almost Japanese flavor.

I can understand why many people would have a hard time with Blind Detective, and would view the experience as contrived. To's movies are very stylized, and like many fans, I love the open admission of film making he brings to the theater. His work is about the medium, like abstract painting, or wood fired ceramic.

There is very little down time with action, humor, intrigue, and lots of eating. Chinese cuisine provides a metaphor for the entire point of this film. Spicy awesome'ness abounds!

Acting and directing is over the top exaggerated, but the camera, sound, and lighting is more subtle and traditional. This combination captures the action perfectly. This is perhaps a Johnnie To signature, and something many western directors can learn from. Film does not have to be all one thing, all one style - mixing stylization in one area, but remaining traditional in another provides juxtaposition and contrast that is a joy as a viewer to behold.

If you have seen To's movies, this is another fantastic entry to his resume. Anyone new to his brand of film making should enter with an open mind, and not allow expectation to ruin the experience. Have fun!

over the top fun 8 out of 10

Blind Detective marks the sixth time Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng have played an on screen couple. Three of them, Needing You, Love on a Diet and Yesterday Once More were all Milkyway productions. Their first collaboration in the office romantic comedy Needing You is the original blueprint of their coupling, establishing the lovable quirks of Sammi Cheng, the catchy pop theme song sung by Cheng and her charming chemistry with Andy Lau. When Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng are next to each other in a movie, it's so dripping in charm you feel like anything can happen. They can be pigging out at a restaurant, do crazy borderline illegal things or scream at each other. No wrong can be done.

In a way, that is the guide to enjoying Blind Detective. Lau and Cheng completely drive the film, not the plot or the mystery. It's a combination of Johnnie To's 2007 Mad Detective and the fourth sequel-in-spirit of Lau and Cheng Milkyway romantic comedies. In fact, having that preexisting knowledge is a requirement to understanding the film's meandering tone.

At 130 minutes, Wai Ka-Fai's script takes on more subplots than necessary. The mystery plot had me most engaged, and I liked how the crime-solving plot sprouted in multiple cases. The final reveal seemed rushed and a bit far-fetched to be truly believable. And there were details that should have been caught. The subplot with Andy Lau trying to woo a dance instructor played by Gao Yuan Yuan is cute but extraneous. It's like the filmmakers brainstormed every possible thing for Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng's characters to do, filmed all of them, and couldn't decide what to take out.

In the end, Blind Detective is a weird animal. It won't translate to overseas audiences and probably shouldn't have premiered at Cannes. It's biggest achievement is it knows its stars are the main attraction and does everything it can with them. Andy Lau seems to be relishing in this role and it's adorable how his character is a major foodie. I laughed throughout it's entirety, never really questioning where the plot was going because I knew the context. And for that, people who are familiar with Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng's coupling in Milkyway productions will have a better time.

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After 7 years waiting, Johnnie To finally successfully reunited Sammi Cheng and Andy Lau as a couple again, which with no doubt, worth the weight of fans' expectation. I personally is a big fan of Sammi Cheng since I was in junior school, she technically 'disappear' like about 5 or 6 years from Hong Kong entertainment with all the ups and downs of her life buzzing beneath paparazzi's papers. Just about when people getting to forget her voice and smile, she suddenly came back to life with eye-catching Blind Detective.

Being one of the top directors in Hong Kong showbiz, Johnnie To's definitely smart. He produced Drug War last year using Louis Koo and another mainland Chinese actor Sun Honglei as leading actors, which in my perspective, somehow lost the eye-catching element in the first place, though the story is not bad, and actually, it's really a nice film, even better than Blind Detective. Sammi Cheng and Andy Lau, the magic couple in screen lightening all chemistries between them on fire, make this movie on the right track of being a huge success both in box office and in the acting itself.

Sammi Cheng plays her usual role- blur girl and effortlessly presenting a cute character, while Andy Lau jumps out of his comfort zone to play a retired blind detective who majors a foodie, instead of a disciplined police officer, both of them make the characters alive as requested. Though Andy Lau joins some other terrible movies these years, such as Switch, this one isn't one of them. He totally deserves applause as much as he's in Running Out of Time and Infernal Affairs.

And I agree with other reviewers that the plot sag for this film is the unrequited love of Andy Lau towards the tango dancer who featured by mainland Chinese actress Gao Yuanyuan, this scene is flavorless no matter how gorgeous Gao Yuanyuan is. I can understand why Johnnie To adds this arc as it's tailor-in for the mainland China market (the same reason using Guo Tao as the police officer, who is also from mainland China), however, I cannot deny the fact that these irrelevant characters dragged down the whole level of the movie a little bit. As a fan of traditional Hong Kong production movies, I really hate it that every single movie has to have a mainland Chinese actor/actress nowadays, and the worst part is, almost every one of these characters seems to be ponderous, irrelevant, abrupt and if not for the marketing purpose, they will definitely not exist at all.

All in all, the movie is good and above the average level, comparing to other movies in the cinema which are completely nonsense to me.

Johnnie To's latest film marks a long-anticipated reunion of Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng, the rom-com triad has chalked up magical box-office draw and successes in the Aughts (most victorious ones are LOVE ON A DIET 2001, 7/10 and NEEDING YOU… 2000, 8/10), and after a 9- year-hiatus (since YESTERDAY ONCE MORE 2004, 6/10), this "iron triangle" has notched up an inspiring comeback which ingeniously imbues a lighthearted rom-com into an out-of-left-field detective thriller with an adequate whodunit revelation in the end.

For international territory, Johnnie To is mostly appreciated by his grim and stylized portrayal of Hong Kong's crime and gangster underbellies, a patriarch ruling world of ambitious figures seeking for money, women and power, but his collaboration with Lau and Cheng is a consistent offshoot from To and his own MILKY WAY IMAGE COMPANY's prolific filmography, not to mention is his most popular and profitable ones. So the innovation banks on how To would mingle his trademark darker traits into the audience-friendly couple (Lau and Cheng, indicates their 7th on-screen alliance as lovers), which could allure both To's hardcore fans and a wider general appeal from a maturer demography. Judging by the finished film, the tentative stab is a smart move, BLIND DETECTIVE is on its way of becoming To's most money-earning film in mainland China market (previously the record was just freshly held by To's earlier drug-cartel undercover drama DRUG WAR 2012).

A posh Andy Lau, a former police officer who has been blind in lieu of his negligence of his own health in order to track suspects, teamed with a wealthy policewoman (Cheng), who is obsessed with the disappearance of her friend 20 years ago, together they manage to crack a few unsolved cases while put their own lives in danger. For Lau's method of deducing, if you are familiar with the new series HANNIBAL, imaging oneself at the murder scene and incarnating one's identity as the culprit to visualize what had happened is not new, but the mind-cum-body default (Lau is the mastermind while Cheng is the right-hand woman does all the action labor) works wonder here, with Cheng's ongoing crush on Lau, the pair sparks off a flavorful rib-tickling screwball casualness allies with the horrid cases they are working on, a superb visual stunt comes from the mortuary slaughter, gallows humor galore.

Sammi Cheng is burdened with a great quantity of physical endeavor out of her slim frame, furthermore she is exhorted to deliver her career-best stretches as the film demands, i.e. the myriad avatars of heartbroken female victims, and her comical timing with Lau is another linchpin to the success. Lau, an epicure more than a sleuth, is amiable and emits his deadly debonair all over the devil-may-care script. Among supporting roles, mainland players Tao Guo and Yuanyuan Gao are sidelined only as comic relief, while a cocktail of veteran Hong Kong thespians is shortchanged by the brevity of their presence.

Strictly speaking, the process of disclosing the perpetrators is not as cogent as it seems, the hyperbole of Lau's knack (against his blindness) is sometimes pulling audiences out of the picture a bit, but BLIND DETECTIVE is a paradigm of To and his team's great attempt to concoct a genre-blender which is both entertaining and ruminative, it is an earnest piece of work, a precious gem considering the plight of China's mainstream cinema (potboilers are brimful while the market is rising at an exponential rate), Johnnie To, is the last straw of the once-glorious Hong Kong film industry and he is the trailblazer refuses to compromise or pander for the unique policy-oriented requirements, calling for emulators and successors.