Detective Dee: The Mystery of the Phantom Flame

There's some very good things to say about this film. Great set pieces, wonderful camera work and some very good actors. Colourful, historic and epic in its aims, with some great but not overly violent martial artistry.

Yet for all that it ticks off on the list, it's just not very engrossing.

The detective story is a bit convoluted and tries to marry magic, superstition, rationalism and surprise. Yet, it gets all a little too confusing and not something you can accept. I agree that you have to suspend disbelief, but you are meant to be figuring out the mystery and you just lose interest when some of the revelations are made. Some of it is clever but too left-field to admire.

This is just a disappointment. I just couldn't get into this, I watched to the end and was left just underwhelmed. As said, I liked a number of things about this film, yet the sum of its parts is definitely not less than the whole.