The Detective
Just when you were starting to think the Pang brothers couldn’t make a decent movie anymore, C+ starring Aaron Kwok finally gets a UK release…
I don’t know about you, but I had wondered if the Pang brothers were able to make a decent movie. Much of their back catalogue has had a inclination to, at very least, be a little hit and miss (quite spectacularly so!), and the early successes of Bangkok Dangerous and The Eye have rarely been matched – not helped by their tendency to be rather over prolific and exploit these triumphs by cashing in on remakes and countless sequels.
For instance, there’s the long-running series of Eye sequels, including the latest 3D incarnation Child’s Eye, or that Nicholas Cage remake of their own Bangkok Dangerous, which felt like the story had been through the studio mangler and excised of everything that made it different and original.
More recently The Storm Warriors was truly a visual delight, but lacked any discernable plot to give the film depth. (And yes, even a special effects driven film needs some sort of comprehendible story!)
So it’s rather a pleasure to find a recent film by Oxide Pang that doesn’t dishearten. Even more so as this came the same year as their US debut The Messengers, produced by Sam Raimi – which looks like a soulless cross between The Amityville Horror and Ju-On (‘looks’ being the pertinent word, it’s been on that shelf for a long time while I put off the disappointment), and twin brother Danny Pang’s outrageously silly disaster of a movie, Forest Of Death.
The Detective stars Aaron Kwok (The Storm Warriors, Divergence, 2000 AD) as the eponymous private eye Tam, a rather hapless example of the profession who became one to find his missing parents as his short-sightedness put him out of the running to be a police officer. Tam has a gut feeling for the truth, but lacks much savvy when in comes to investigations: his suspects always know when he’s following them, and he has no stomach for the ickier nature of the work.
Which turns out to be a problem when he is hired by Lang (Kenny Wong, New Police Story, Invisible Target, Fatal Move) to track down a woman he believes is trying to kill him, and it soon turns into a murder case. Soon his best friend police inspector Fung Chak (Liu Kai-Chi, Beast Stalker, Protégé, in another great supporting role) is telling him to back off the case, but despite being well out of his depth Tam refuses to let go until he solves the case.
Pretty boy Kwok turns in another great performance as Tam, proving that he has not only has a keen eye for interesting roles but can deliver, winning him a nomination at both the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival and the Hong Kong Film Awards for Best Actor.
There’s great support form the cast too, but in many ways it’s the character of Bangkok itself which is the real star here. Director Oxide may have been born and raised in Hong Kong, but his real home seems to be Thailand.
Here he and cinematographer Decha Srimantra (a collaborator on most of the Pangs films, including The Eye, both versions of Bangkok Dangerous and Re-cycle) shoots the streets with a gritty, sweaty heat that may not show them in their best light (he does seem to find some of the grubbiest locations!) but finds a genuineness in them. It even won Anusorn Pinyopojanee best art direction at the Taipei Golden Horse. There’s even a bouncing Thai-pop soundtrack.
Oddly I remember there being quite a few comparisons to Johnnie To and Wong Ka-fai’s Mad Detective, but other than being a quirky detective story released about the same time with, er, the word ‘detective’ in the title, there’s not really much in it. Lau Ching Wan’s character is of course the complete opposite: far too clever for his own good.
It is just a little too long, unusually for the Pangs, and the one draw back is that (spoiler alert!) it being a Pang brother movie naturally there has to be a ghost involved – really, we didn’t need that. But overall this is very enjoyable. Let’s hope UK distributors Terracotta get hold of the sequel and put that out soon too!
The Detective was released on DVD on Monday, 11 April, by Terracotta Distribution.
DVD details
Distributor: Terracotta Distribution (UK)
A good solid master of the film really brings the drenched saturated colours to life.
There's a few extras, including an exclusive introduction by director Oxide Pang, a making of featurette, and Behind the scenes at the Gala. Though the production of some of the exclusive material may not be great, at least Terracotta are trying – which is more than can be said for most of their competitors.
