Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2011)

"Detective Dee: The Mystery of the Phantom Flame" is an entertaining movie that couldn't be mistaken for anything else but what it is: a Hark Tsui's movie.Detective Dee, an all-charm Andy Lau, has been in prison for 8 years because he opposed the wife of the deceased Emperor and her growing power. But after some mysterious killings happen just before she is to become Regent Empress, he is called back to help.And little more. The plot is just empty air. You have some betrayals, some mysterious deaths, some investigation done by detective Dee, but really, the plot is little less than an excuse. There is almost zero detective work and little tension.What it lacks in plot or character development (it doesn't help that everyone is overacting, something typical on the other hand in this type of movies), it more than makes up for in flashy set ups, nice fights and colorful environments (even if the CGI work can be... well, lacking). Tsui Hark knows how to make everything look amazing and the atmosphere is just great, and all the set ups are really cool (as the underground city). It all looks so good that it ends up leaving the viewer with a feeling of a wasted opportunity. Tsui Hark doesn't care much for pace or plot, more about set ups, pieces and fights. The movie could have been much better if it was more balanced. As it is, it is an enjoyable time in front of the screen, but don't go expecting much more.

I saw it and to me this isn't a Judge Dee story. It is a Kung Fu movie and not a great one at that. I'm sorry - if I want to see Kung Fu characters flying through the air on wires and doing physically impossible feats in a world of myth and magic then I'll look for it. What I wanted was a good Judge Dee story - a logical and intelligent deductive reasoning detective story set in a rich and fascinating Tang Dynasty world.I am a great fan of Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee books. I had just read "The Phantom of the Temple" a few days before seeing this movie. What I had expected was a movie with a story line set in the world of Judge Dee and keeping in harmony with that world. They are intelligent whodunnits without an overbearing supernatural element. The TV movie "Judge Dee and the Monastery Murders" that was taken from "The Haunted Monastery" was quite enjoyable.Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame was a great disappointment. The story by Lin Qianyu was just not up to snuff. Unfortunately, so was the action. I've seen as good in TV shows like Andromeda.

I decided to watch this movie after seeing a trailer on youtube that made it look absolutely mind blowing, an incredible, overwhelming spectacle with incredible action; it basically looked like something that could rival Yimou Zhang's brilliant Hero. It's one hell of a trailer, and at times the movie comes close to living up to it.It takes a while for the movie to get going though. Sure, it's epic (although some of the special effects look a little too computer- generated, something I would think would be even more problematic on the big screen instead of my TV), but the pacing feels a little sluggish. It also turns out to be sillier than the trailer, as I realized when a talking deer started advising the Empress. The movie is rather odd in this way, offering magical touches but not really creating a consistently magical world.The first scene that really matched the trailer involves a naked woman and a remarkable number of arrows, and it totally awesome. In general, the action scenes are pretty cool.The story is decidedly convoluted and not everything in it makes narrative sense. But it comes close enough to making sense that the action keeps you from worrying too much about it.So no, it's not another Hero, but it has moments that come close. And while I would rather see the movie the guy who edited the trailer had in his head over the movie I actually got, the movie as it exists is really fun.

After watching this, I ran to IMDb to see just how much the American distributor had cut out of it. For some reason, many American distributors who buy up martial arts movies think that story doesn't really matter, so they should be able to cut all of it out. Well, if there were cuts, IMDb doesn't know about them. It lists just the one runtime of 119 minutes. So how is this movie so incoherent? Apparently that's just how it is. Andy Lau plays an inspector in mytho-historical China who has been imprisoned since he challenged the ascension of the new Empress (Carina Lau, who, back in the day, starred in many Wong Kar-Wai films). After a mysterious crime which resulted in several people spontaneously combusting, the Empress recruits Lau to investigate, teamed with an albino, Chao Deng, and the Empress' personal guard, Bingbing Li. Deng and Li have their own loyalties. So, okay, the story up to here is followable, even if there is a completely unexplained talking deer (they'll deal with it later). Then it just goes nuts. At first, this is amusing. I'm all for nuts. At one point they have to go find a guy named Donkey Wang, which is awesome. Then... a whole bunch of incomprehensible crap happens, and the film completely lost me. The story seems cut to pieces, but even worse is the way the action sequences are edited. I had no idea what the heck was going on. Eventually, I got so bored I nodded off (not before Andy Lau beat up a couple of CGI deer, which was certainly worth seeing). The whole thing seemed like a huge mess to me.