china, 690: wu zetian (carina lau) is about to be installed as the first female emperor and there are rumblings of discontent afoot. when the man who is supervising the construction of colossus sized buddha bursts into flames, soon followed by one of wu's soldiers, the empress-to-be decides that the cause of these deaths needs investigating. deciding that this matter needs resolving swiftly, she calls upon detective dee (andy lau), who is currently in prison for supporting those who opposed her reign after her husband's death. still, there's no reason to bear a grudge and detective dee, flanked by wu's right-hand woman, jing'er (li bing bing), and a military investigator, donglai (deng chao), sets out to solve this mystery...

well, it's been five years since tsui hark's return to the wu xi genre, which treated him so well (and vice versa) in the past. now, despite its flaws, i did quite enjoy large swathes of 'seven swords' and i could certainly see the potential, had the time and money been afforded to hark to complete it the way he wanted to. with 'detective dee and the mystery of the phantom flame' it seems as if no such constraints had been placed upon him. this is a lavish, opulent production, with the huge sets, some pretty high quality cgi, lots of locations and a pretty huge scale. my mind is currently thinking how i'd like to watch 'seven swords' again, which means that you can probably pre-empt my overall opinion of 'detective dee...'

this is a film which is okay. okay, at best. sure, i enjoyed the scale and execution of the film: it is, without a doubt, well made. i enjoyed andy lau, who was working his slightly smug persona very well, carina lau had some amazing eyebrows, li bing bing was a treasure (she always is) and deng chou really impressed me.

however, it all seemed a little vacuous and i found that i was only mildly engaged by the narrative, which didn't ask too many questions of its viewer. the majority of the set-pieces were only just passable but, for something with this epic scale, shouldn't we be demanding something a little more than passable?

all in all, a little underwhelming...