Detective vs Sleuths

When I stumbled upon the 2022 Hong Kong crime mystery "San Taam Daai Zin" (aka "Detective vs Sleuths"), I had to sit down and watch it.

First of all, it was a Hong Kong movie that I hadn't already seen, and that in itself is more than sufficient to make me watch it. But the movie also has Ching Wan Lau and Charlene Choi on the cast list and they usually tend to make okay movies.

However, the storyline in "San Taam Daai Zin", as written by Lu Jia, Li Jie, Ka-Fai Wai and Yibing Wang, was a swing and a miss for me. The storyline was incredibly cluttered and made for a very confusing viewing. Whatever was going on in the movie just wasn't properly introduced or described to the audience, and as such I felt like I was sitting in darkness trying to make sense of the barrage of events, killings and characters that came rushing at me on the screen.

For a crime mystery, then director Ka-Fai Wai just went a bit overboard in terms of setting out to accomplish way too much with the storyline.

The acting performances in the movie were good, and especially Ching Wan Lau portrayed the disturbed Lee Chun character quite well.

Lots of nice locations throughout the course of the movie, and there was a nice dynamic feel to the movie and the way it was filmed, and that at least helped make the movie somewhat more watchable.

This is not a shining gem in the Hong Kong cinema, and it is definitely not a movie that I would recommend fans of the Hong Kong cinema to rush out and get to watch. In fact, this movie is one that I will never return to watch a second time. There are indeed far better crime mysteries in the Hong Kong cinema, if that particular genre is what you enjoy.

My rating of "San Taam Daai Zin" lands on a very generous four out of ten stars.

Not a booring movie so it should be watched atleast once who likes thriller or detective story.

Story is good.

Action is ok.

Actors are good.

Character are in good set.

Just a bit too fast for Viewers who do not know Cantonese language.

The main character has fast thinking and speech is also too fast as per the story. So when you rely or have dependency on Subtitles than you loose some scene or either how the story is connected.

If possible than Viewers are advised to watch atleast in their understanding language i.e. Dubbed version.

I am sure even dubbing artist will face challenges in dubbing for the main character.

In 2007, Ka-Fai Wai wrote and co-directed, along with his much more internationally-famous colleague Johnnie To, the absurd crime thriller "Mad Detective", one of my all-time favourite films.

Now, after a 13-year absence from directing, Ka-Fai Wai is back, this time without Johnnie To or To's production company Milky Way, but with a film that seems like a new riff on "Mad Detective", almost a sequel. Ching Lan Wau is back, playing again an insane detective with some apparently supernatural crime-solving abilities lying underneath his madness.

It might sound derivative of the former film, but Detective vs Sleuths has some new tricks up its sleeve, and it honestly feels extremely fresh. Its twisty plot comes together beautifully in the end, the action scenes are some of the best in recent memory, and Ching Lan Wau's performance is bloody brilliant. His antics are crowd-pleasingly hilarious, but it never undermines the film's commitment to its increasingly outrageous narrative.

This film feels like a throw-back, to a level of creativity in Asian cinema that was much more common in the 2000s than what we've seen in the last decade. Certainly, I enjoyed this more than anything Johnnie To has directed since "Mad Detective". That film inspired me to check out more of Johnnie To's work, but now I'm realizing that Ka-Fai Wai deserves equal attention, and I'm very glad he's back after such a long absence.

I dunno cantonese but the meaning of the original title is Detective War which is far better than official english title, Detective VS Sleuth, really? Sleuth? Never heard people use that word.

For this movie, I guess it is too rushing, too many characters, and too chaos. I understand the director dont want to waste any time, he just want us to become breathless all the time watching this movie. Maybe if he give us some drama so we can take our breath. Or maybe I am too old to watch this movie, everything happen so fast...

I was very into this movie for a while. The mystery is set up well and takes you on an intricate journey. Some of the action is pretty good and exciting. The lead actor gives a great performance. And I was invested in the main characters.

But the flaws killed it for me. The action becomes tedious and stale while also becoming outrageous and not believable. All the bullets miss. Early on I forgave this a couple times. But it keeps happening, and worse every time. Hundreds of bullets are shot and they keep missing.

Then you have other things like hilariously fake-looking blood spatter. Or other times when people get shot with no blood whatsoever. Or unrealistic CG fire.

I thought this was pretty good for a while and still has a lot of positives, but the negatives brought it way down for me. (1 viewing, 1/16/2023)