Detective Chinatown (2015)

I'm not a huge fan of the films put out by mainland China, finding them flawed in various ways: either bogged down in appalling CGI, spoilt by unwanted propaganda, or packed with the lamest comedy imaginable. I thought the same would be true of DETECTIVE CHINATOWN, but it turns out to be a lot more enjoyable than I had hoped. The story follows a young, bland cop, played by a slightly wooden Liu Haoran, who is reejcted by the police and who heads off with his bizarre uncle to solve a murder case in Thailand. Said uncle is played by Wang Baoqiang, who I previously saw in the likes of BLIND SHAFT and KUNG FU KILLER, and he turns out to be perfectly cast. He's eccentric, over the top, very energetic, and most of all, funny. His character is pretty outrageous but he makes the film enjoyable and his long-running feud with a rival leads to the movie's greatest moments. Some of it is slow and sappy, but the lowbrow slapstick scenes are fun and there's some Jackie Chan-style action and a scene or two borrowed from THE RAID 2 which are very entertaining.

I must say Chinatown Detective is never the best detective film, but it's a good one. Funny, plot reasonably complicated, a twist in the end. Two young actors' performance is convincing enough, especially the girl. Her last scene really struck me and many other Chinese audiences. I doubt if those who didn't see any good out of it watched it throughout at all. It doesn't have the fanciest or epoch- breaking technical innovation, but neither do most filmmakers around the world. For instance, the gunfight in the hospital is a good scene. The escape from the police station might be a tribute to Jackie Chan's earlier films. There are many funny moments where I got good laughs. But not understanding the Chinese language will cause a problem to that. A few of the actors are renowned for their comedian work in their local dialect. The robber wearing glasses are famous for his comedies in his Northeastern dialect which is a big contrast to the location of the film. If a viewer doesn't understand Chinese or Thai, they might not know that the Thai police chief would give instructions in Thai but threaten to fire the two Chinese officers in Chinese.The humour isn't that Chinese people are making fun of Chinese people. It's that the safest joke you can ever make is about yourself. After all, character arrangements are only film characters. They're not always meant to be realistic, especially in the comedic bits. It's strange if anyone imagine all Chinese people will be so ridiculous as certain characters. There's also deep philosophy hidden in the film which I wonder how many Hollywood popular films have. If you don't watch Chinatown Detective carefully, you probably have entirely forgotten about the caption at the beginning of the film. In fact, the ending of the film or two young characters in the film is the evidence to the caption at the beginning. It is also in the discussion between the two youngsters. Therefore, whoever says this film is a complete failure or anyone who watches this is an idiot will be an idiot in my eyes, honestly. Reviewers like BasicLogic might lack basic logic in certain ways. If I don't like some film, I won't say this film is made of utter stupidity, because it's non-sense. Only seeing the problems in Chinese film industry instead of problems in their own film industry (I guarantee there must be some as there's no such thing as a perfect industry) is just biased and arrogant.Whoever says this film isn't funny at all, it's because people have different perception on humour. I never found Annie Hall funny. I thought The Hangover franchise or Due Date weren't so funny for my taste. But I enjoyed The Philadelphia Story and Divorzio all'Italiana. I don't think it's the best idea to judge negatively upon a comedy which is not your taste. (Not to mention you don't understand the Chinese language, which means you won't get any linguistic humour.) On the other hand, an art-house film or documentary lover shouldn't look down upon a good comedy simply because it was made to be entertaining. Ultimately, most films are made for entertainment. If you want to be high-brow, that's your own business. But don't laugh at others who want to have a good laugh.I would personally recommend this film. If there are people who hate it, that's not their fault. But that's not the film's fault either.

I thought the movie was very, very funny.It had some very good jokes in it. You get nervous seeing comedies in a different language than your own and wonder if you'll get the jokes, but the jokes were a simplistic base of comedy that everyone can laugh atPlus several of the jokes were visual slap stick that was just universal. In fact the movie all together was visually simulating, which showed Thailand's Chinatown to be a very colorful place.The two main actors in this were an exceptional team as well. The movie is about a young man who fails out of the police academy despite his exceptional skills in observation (he plays the straight man). TY get over his depression he visits an uncle who lives in Thailand (he plays the screw ball) Together they have to solve a murder while looking for a gangster's gold. It was a really fun, entertaining film to watch.

Another terrible and ridiculous garbage movie from China, wasted lot of money to shoot it in Thailand. The screenplay was just ridiculous and absurd to the extreme, the casting, Jesus wept, so bad, the acting, I really can't stop my head and neck to shake horizontally. This kind of movies would only be appealed to viewers with low I.Q. and poor education. By keep watching this kind of movies would undoubtedly damage your brain cells, not just your wallet.After the Chinese enjoyed the sudden prosperous wealth in almost every trade you could imagine, lot of people have become so rich, but their tastes simply failed to catch up with their fortune, they just wanted to become 'Investor', or "Movie Producer" and printed such newly added titles on their business cards. They blindly threw their easily earned money once they were approached by some con-artists in the Chinese movie industries before even understood what is what. Therefore, so many media companies jumped into the cesspool to produce movies either trying to release on the big silver screens or on the on-line PC monitors with so many bad screenplays, bad so-called directors and actors. The result is so many barely watchable, so stupid, ridiculous, messy movies were churned out monthly and yearly. The only trick was to sign up certain famous actors, male or female, to be the leading role and put their names on the posters for the selling point. These actors just shamelessly jumped on the money train to make more money while they were still either hot or popular.This god-awful farce is just like what I have pointed out on the above. They signed up a still popular ugly actor to be the main character, an absolutely unbelievable Chinese Thai police detective in Bangkok Chinatown, then with a mix of clowns and jerks to be the supporting characters, adding another young lamer to be the kinfolk of the clown-like Chinatown detective, finally patched up such god-forbidden farce.You have to become a complete idiot to watch this or, you don't have to suffer such transformation since you are already a moron with a complete fried brain, then both of such pathetic beings might enjoy this farce and keep laughing non-stop. Consider this review is a sincere warning with goodwill.