Movie Review: Detective Dee and Mystery of the Phantom Flame

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Another poor weekend movie choice for the big releases with last week having an animated 17 year old film converted to 3D taking the box office. This weekend didn’t look like any new releases were going to beat it. (update, yeah, Lion King 3D was the highest grossing movie for a second weekend) Back to the art house films I go although, my regular Regal theater is supposed to be cinema art house here in Honolulu, they haven’t shown art house films in a while. So I looked at Consolidated Theaters and one film leapt off the computer monitor at me. Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame just has such an intriguing name I couldn’t pass it up.

The movie is rated PG-13 for violence, disturbing images and some sensuality and ran just over two hours at 122 minutes. The whole time my eyes were attentive to what was happening on the screen. Take beautiful cinematography, add in high wire martial arts (like a Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon), set it in 690 AD for a period movie and lay that on top of a murder mystery and you have an engaging film. The fact you that you have to keep looking at the screen in order to read the subtitles helps keep you engaged too.

Empress Wu (Carina Lau) is soon to be coronated as the first female Emperor of China. While a giant Buddha statue for the coronation is being constructed two of her high level officials mysteriously and suddenly burn up. Some think it is divine intervention signaling that Wu should not be crowned. Others believe there is plot afoot not by the gods but by man to stop the ceremony. The best person to solve the mystery is Detective Dee (Andy Lau), a man who eight years earlier was sent to prison for opposing the empress’ raise to power. To help ensure the now released detective stays on the case, the empress assigns Shangguan Jing’er (Li Bing Bing) and Pei Donglai (Chao Deng) to both assist and watch over Dee.

The martial arts staging was enthralling to watch. Flips, climbs, dives, jumps, spins and back bends done with the assistance of wires are staged with deft choreography bringing the fight scenes to life. Include weaponry with swords, arrows, whips and a special mace and you have some edge of your seat kick butt altercations. With assassins running rampant to stop Dee, Jing’er and Pei from trying to solve the mystery and you never know when a fight to save their lives will break out. Being high on the cinematography scale scenes with falling white petals adds to the mood of the film.

Two items that I found took away from the experience slightly were the subtitles and the massive CGI shots. For the CGI they needed to be tweaked slightly. I can’t put my finger on why, but any of the scenes showing massive amounts of boats in the harbor just didn’t look quite right. I’m not sure if it was the coloring, the movement or shapes that my mind automatically jumped to “those aren’t real.” For the subtitles, there was a few times when there were large sentences on display and not enough time to read them; sometimes they just flashed too quickly. Being what they are, your eyes focused on the bottom of the screen preventing you from focusing in on the beautiful details in intricate designs, patterns and background action and absorbed them fully. This is one film that a dubbed version might actually make it better allowing you to watch with eyes wide open across the entire screen rather than just the lower third.

Even though Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame was originally released in 2010 and received nominations for Best Film and Best Choreography while winning for Best Director and Best Costume Design at the 30th Hong Kong Film Awards, it has just now made its way to American shores. If you have a chance to see the film on the big screen, I think you’ll enjoy it.

The Movie Monkey

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Movie Review: Micmacs

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It was one of those weekends again. In theaters was Will Ferrell playing another man boy (at least it looked like it via the previews) or a 3D dance movie. From what I understand, at least the 3D movie was filmed in 3D and not post processed. But I digress. In either case, I wasn't interested in those movies so I looked to the art cinema for something and found something I did! From french director Jean-Pierre Jeunet Micmacs was one of the selections available. The film had played on the film festival circuit starting back in 2009 and had a limited release that began on May 28, 2010.

Well, it made its way to Honolulu for the first weekend in August. Even though it was one of those films where you have to read the words at the bottom of the screen, it was a refreshingly quirky and different kind of film.

The film starts out in the desert. We see a team attempting to clear landmines. It was unsuccessful. During the funeral the property of the dead man is delivered and as the wife gives a blank stare over the open package, the son grabs a packet out of the box and runs to his room. The packet contains crime scene photos where he sees a logo on the land mine remains. Flash forward 30 years and see the boy now a man observing a shooting by his work place. Unfortunately, wrong place and wrong time. He ends up getting shot in the head.

Of course this changes Bazil's (Dany Boon) life. At this point the original french title of Micmacs a tire-larigot comes into play. There is no direct translation but it's something along the lines of non-stop or a lot of shenanigans. After coming out of the hospital with the bullet still embedded in his head, Bazil no longer has a job or home and is adopted into an eclectic "family" who go around Paris, collect junk and recycle them into useful or possibly re-purposed objects. After Bazil discovers the manufacturers of the land mine and bullet that affected his life, he decides to do something about it. The family joins in with a "they all do it together or he doesn't do it at all" attitude.

The movie makes a point about arms dealers. We've seen some of it before but the way that it's brought forth in this movie is more lighthearted and almost whimsical fashion. People would like to see the end of war, expect for the arms dealers. If there was no war and fighting and conflict, these companies wouldn't be in business and making money. Jeunet brings us some of the atrocities of war and slams our head against the wall with the point but at the same times gives us this nice soft fluffy pillow to make the slam comfortable enough that you almost wanted to ask for another one.

You could say that war was declared on the war makers. Each member of the family adds their talents to the plan to bring down the companies involved in making arms. I'm not going to get into the skills or give away the names, that was part of the enjoyment of the film, discovering who these people are. Calling them misfits would be wrong. They are square pegs who instead of trying to fit into a round hole found the square hole where they fit. With one particular sexual distraction used in the plan and the violence of war, the movie is rated R. Now according to sources the movie should have lasted 105 minutes, but I'm not totally sure of length or if there was an easter egg at the end. As the credits started to roll, the actor listing had just started to scroll up the screen when they abruptly stopped and the house lights came on. I hadn't expected the movie to end that way.

If Micmacs comes to your local art house cinema or becomes available via Netflix or in Blockbuster, have a look, I think that you'll find it enjoyable.

The Movie Monkey

To subscribe to the audio podcast of the reviews via iTunes click here. Audio versions are released the following Wednesday.


To listen to the audio version, click here