REVIEW: Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame

There are no spoilers in this review.

PLOT: An exiled detective is recruited to solve a series of mysterious deaths that threaten to delay the inauguration of Empress Wu.


THE GOOD: Concept. On paper, Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame sounds like a really cool movie. The trailer was well-cut and even had dubstep! It looked like a movie that could kick so much ass. Think Sherlock Holmes, but if he was Chinese and knew kung fu. Sadly the film is not executed well, but I give it a B+ for trying. One of the issues might be that it combines the realistic with the supernatural in a very poor way. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon did this well in 2000 making the possibility of leaping across a lake believable in the world it created. Detective Dee has a prophetic talking deer... yeaaaaaah. The movie is based on Di Renjie (狄仁傑) who was a real official of the Chinese Tang Dynasty and Wu Zetian's Zhou Dynasty, twice serving as chancellor during her reign. Obviously this is a very fictional account of his life, and it's taken in a direction of the classic wushu martial arts films. Popular Chinese director Tsui Hark filmed this movie in Zhejiang, China with a budget of $20 million. Again, credit is deserved here for making a film of this quality with such a modest budget. A movie of this caliber would have cost nearly $100 million if it was made in Hollywood.

DETECTIVE DEE: "I will defeat you with my stinky farts!"

Fight scenes. As with most martial arts films, the fight scenes in this movie are fantastic. Unfortunately they're not plentiful in this movie. Sammo Hung served as the fight choreographer and does some really creative new things that had me impressed.


THE BAD: Special effects. Why does it feel like China has taken 10 steps backwards when it comes to special effects, especially with CGI and green screen? I'm sure by Hong Kong's standards, the effects are great, but Hollywood seems light years ahead of them. Visual effects supervisor Phil Jones even won an award for this movie at the 30th Hong Kong Film Awards. I can only assume that the competition looked even worse.

Oh no lady, don't frisbee ring me to death!

THE END: Out of the two martial art films I saw this year, this and True Legend, I prefer Detective Dee. Still, the quality is not up to par with other wire-fu movies like Crouching Tiger and Hero. If you are a big fan of martial arts films, you should probably see this. If the genre just isn't for you, you can probably skip this one or maybe catch it on TV.


DISCUSS: What did you think of Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame? What have been your favorite most recent martial arts films? How did you hear about this movie? What did you think of the special effects?

DETECTIVE DEE: "I've always loved you, stinky homeless man."