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C+°»±´ (2007)
The Detective


Reviewed by: evirei
Date: 11/14/2011

detective movie lead by Aaron Kwok that was shot in Thailand. I think it is really cool movie. I must say, it really is one of Aaron Kwok movies (based on what I have seen). A series of unfortune events happen after one drunk guy mysteriously asked Aaron Kwok to investigate on a missing woman. It seems everyone close to her died in a tragic yet mysterious ways. I like the cinematography and the treatment of the movie. It really does help enriched the movie.

Reviewer Score: 7

Reviewed by: mrblue
Date: 01/28/2010

The directing team of Oxide and Danny Pang are best known for their ghost-themed films such as The Eye. So, when they work apart, the brothers tend to gravitate towards creating pictures in different genres. Oxide's 2007 release The Detective eschews the supernatural for the most part, instead concentrating on crafting a solid mystery that's well worth checking out if you're a fan of the genre.

Reviewer Score: 7

Reviewed by: j.crawford
Date: 11/18/2008
Summary: engrossing, compelling

Aaron Kwok continues to grow as an actor. Backing up his outstanding performance in After This Our Exile [2006], Kwok is compelling as Tam, the detective. Oxide Pang and his cohorts in the Pang Clan give us a engrossing, compelling movie experience with The Detective. A well constructed mystery story that will keep you guessing right until the end when you end up in familiar Pang Bros. territory. Director Pang does a real nice job casting the supporting roles; uses lots of interesting lighting to make everything look seedy.

[Français] Aaron Kwok continue de croître en tant que comédien. Sauvegarde de ses performances remarquables en après cet exil [2006], Kwok est impérieux que Tam, le détective. Oxide Pang et ses acolytes dans le clan Pang nous donner une captivante, obligeant expérience de film avec le détective. Une histoire bien construite mystère qui vous deviner jusqu'à la fin lorsque vous vous retrouverez en pays de connaissance Pang Bros territoire. Directeur Pang fait une vraie belle job le casting des rôles de soutien, utilise beaucoup de l'éclairage intéressant de faire examiner tout miteux.

[Español] Aaron Kwok sigue creciendo como actor. Copia de seguridad de su destacada actuación en el exilio Después de esta nuestra [2006], que está obligando a Kwok Tam, el detective. Pang y óxido de su cohortes en el Otro del clan nos dan una fascinante, convincente película La experiencia con el detective. Un misterio bien construida historia que te mantendrá adivinando hasta el final al acabar en familiarizado Pang Bros. territorio. Otro director hace un buen trabajo de los papeles de fundición; interesante lleno de iluminación para hacer todo lo sórdido aspecto.


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Reviewer Score: 7

Reviewed by: ewaffle
Date: 04/22/2008

Oxide Pang returns to the cinematic territory he knows and depicts so well in “The Detective”: the sun washed streets and gloomy alleyways of Bangkok. Aaron Kwok is Tam, the title character. I don't know if Oxide Pang's depiction of the streets of Bangkok is accurate--or would be considered accurate by, for example, a Thai citizen of that city, but it certainly rings true, makes sense and looks authentic. We begin under the credits as Tam awakens in mid-afternoon, pulls himself together, draws the steel gates from his door and turns on the lights of his office. This is clearly not a high rent operation--he turns on a fan that swings back and forth but the blades don't turn, an indication of how most of what he comes into contact with doesn’t work the way it should. Tam is an observer, a watcher and a recorder—he carries a digital camera that he uses constantly, has pictures of one of the murder (or is it really suicide?) victims with many different girlfriends from the dead man’s cell phone and finally solves the case after obsessively looking at one partially burned photo using a mag light, blowing it up on a computer, even using a Holmesian touch with magnifying glass. As the movie progresses there are shocks, moments of fear and suspense, nightmare apparitions, shadowy forms that burst from the semi-darkness and unknown dangers lurking behind doors. Pang a master of this and the constant avoidance of a conclusion that the ragged edge of dread causes in both Tam and the audience symbolizes how the murky case never quite gets resolved. There are always more complications with each discovery leading to greater anxiety and danger—and another dead body.

“The Detective” has the structure of a good mystery movie. The case is revealed to us as Tam burrows further into the strange deaths of a group of people with only tenuous connections to each other—we don't know more than he does at any moment. However there are too many distractions from the crime at the center of the movie to put it in the top tier of detective movies and too many red herrings that point in directions that aren’t followed up to keep our interest for its entire hour and fifty minutes. At one point it seems that Inspector Chak might be using Tam to continue investigating deaths that have been officially closed as suicide or caused by misadventure, while at another we think that Chak might be setting up Tam to take the fall for one or more of the killings. It is a great looking movie, precisely edited and beautifully shot—although there are too many scenes shot from very high or low angles, one of the trademarks of 1950s film noir but more of a distraction here. It doesn’t take much to establish that Tam is confused by the unfolding case and haunted by his past and Pang’s underlining it with camera placement was too obvious. Those quibbles aside, though, “The Detective” is a bravura exercise in the technical arts of filmmaking.

Aaron Kwok does a good job as someone who is dropped into the middle of a series of brutal crimes that he doesn’t understand but feels he must solve. The trail leads him to a Chinatown grocery store where friends gather every day to play mahjong—but the games are interrupted after several players are found dead. Mahjong at Uncle Cheung’s suddenly seems to invite very bad luck. He stumbles into the horrendous sight of a hanged man, a person who has been dead for a few days—this is Ming who not only has a connection to the girl that Tam is looking for but also has a gorgeous widow who is not terribly upset with his death. This leads to discoveries of a stock buying club that may have lost millions of bhat and whose members are keeping the coroner busy because they keep turning up dead. The more he investigates the more dead people turn up and one of them is almost Tam himself when someone drops a refrigerator from a building, an appliance that crashes to the ground just inches from him and just misses crushing him. Later he gets a note made from cut out words from a newspaper telling him to back off from the investigation. The scene in which Tam actually solves the original murder is a technical tour de force, a brilliant use of all the tools at Oxide Pang's command to astonish and thrill the audience.

Some of the images and tropes that Pang uses in “The Detective” echo “Chinatown” with Tam as the initially reluctant but increasingly involved Jake Gittes but is also connected to “The Big Sleep”, with its ultimately confusing ending.

Reviewer Score: 7

Reviewed by: MrBooth
Date: 02/06/2008
Summary: Stylish and smart

Aaron Kwok plays a private detective in Bangkok's Chinatown who suspects there is more to a string of suicides than meets the eye. The location gives the film a different look and feel, which the cinematography capitalises on to the full. It's a very stylish, sometimes beautiful film. The story is interesting enough to keep me wanting to find out more (I knew nearly zero beforehand, probably for the best), and the eventual resolution was satisfying. Aaron Kwok has definitely matured as an actor, and is now somebody I look foreward to seeing in a film (actually I never understood why he was so vilified - as singer/actors go he was never that bad), and Liu Kai Chi gives another satisfying performance too. Oxide Pang's direction is mostly intelligent and effective, and the result is a rewarding mystery-thriller.

Reviewer Score: 7

Reviewed by: Anticlimacus
Date: 02/06/2008
Summary: Solid Flick

Aaron Kwok gives the best performance of his career in this thriller by director Oxide Pang. Given the typical story of a detective who attempts to solve a series of murders, this film adds a boatload of entertainment in the form of style, structure, camerawork, and surprises. Some of the shots here are spectacular, like the confrontation with an attractive woman as well as a cool tour inside a photograph. One interesting feature is how the detective persistently uses photographs to extract vital clues regarding his investigation. The characters are all solid, the soundtrack is nice, and the pacing is relentless (despite a number of quiet moments that are peppered throughout) with an effective mix of eeriness, suspensefulness, and shocking moments.

Reviewer Score: 8

Reviewed by: cal42
Date: 01/25/2008
Summary: Decent gumshoe tale

Tam (Aaron Kwok) is a mediocre detective in the heart of the Chinese community in Thailand. One day, drinking buddy Lung (Shing Fui-On) turns up to his office and hands him a photograph of a beautiful woman and a wad of cash. Lung claims the woman is following him and will kill him over a matter that “is nothing to do with me”. Tam suspects that Lung is using him as an introduction agency and just wants to know where the beauty lives, but then people surrounding the woman start to die. Most look like suicides, but Tam is sure they are connected and believes foul play is involved. His friend, police officer Chak (Liu Kai-Chi) indulges Tam for a while, but eventually grows exasperated by his insistence that there’s more to the deaths than meet the eye.

Detective is a decent gumshoe tale told in the gritty, noir-ish style that is so popular in Hong Kong these days. Aaron Kwok is one of the few pop-stars-turned-actors I can watch, as he does tend to have some ability and doesn’t seem obsessed with looking pretty all the time. He shares a lot of screen time with Liu Kai-Chi, who is carving a nice career as a character actor, and the two have some very tangible onscreen chemistry. The film is also helped by the Thai locations, which give it a very different visual feel from the current crop of Hong Kong Noir thrillers. The supporting cast is excellent throughout (Wayne Lai pops up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him role, and Shing Fui-On is creepy as hell as Lung) and the direction is solid. Unfortunately, the film can also be seen as one big advertisement for a certain brand of telephone/camera manufacturer, but I’ve said my piece on product placement elsewhere here and I’m determined not to repeat myself.

As you have probably gathered, not everything is as it seems and the mystery is fairly compelling. It does get uncomfortably complicated than is strictly necessary at times though, and there is a little too much padding to the story for my liking. But you do want to get to the bottom of it all and the fact that the answers don’t come easily enhances the mystery.

Detective is not so much a “whodunit” as a “what-did-they-do”, and is definitely worth seeing. I have a sneaking suspicion that once you’ve been shown all the answers you won’t want to come back to it, but it’s certainly worth the price of a rental.

By the way, in case anyone's interested in what the "C+" bit of the title is supposed to mean, I'm reliably informed that it is a homophone for the word "Private". The other characters translate nicely to "Detective", so the literal translation is "Private Detective". I was hoping it was going to be something a little more obtuse than that, but there you go!

Reviewer Score: 7