San taam daai zin

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)

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.

Instead of saying this is a detective story, it would rather be described as a creepy nonsense and full of shet talk.

The story writer focus too much on shaping a physical mad detective but completely ignore the basic reality of crime fiction presentations. For example, you would ask me to believe an female police officer would perform her job in crime scene where she have to chase, gun fight and building climbing when she is nearly at a stage of a childbirth? And you expect me to believe that Li Jun could be allowed to engage official crime investigation when he suffer severe mental health problem and risk all citizens and officers in life danger? Such nonsense just appeared all over the screen time and made people literally wonder what's going on with this movie.

Most of the character's motivations are simple, easy-predicated and some even ridiculous, which made people more easily to find that how unbelievable flat the character is. This is the kind of the story that you whish you never heard of. This is so....exhausted to watch. Once again, a new tip for myself: DO get out of it even in the middle of screening, when you find something funny is in the film. Instead of a crime fiction that you can enjoy, its more like those ridiculous Late talk show meme for spoof.

The storyline is good, with great level of depth as well as twists and turns. It's easy to understand and NOT confusing at all.

The pace is fast and compact! Things happen here and there to keep you going, without a sense of boredom from the beginning to the end!

An appropriate level of action was inserted to enhance the visual excitement, e.g. Gunfights and typical HK car chasing scenes. All these action sequences work well to keep the momentum going. And the clues unfolded one by one to facilitate audiences' understanding towards the cases and reasons for murders! All the main casts performed well to make it a good show!

However, two main pitfalls were picked up as follows: Firstly, the pace is far too fast that it doesn't allow the movie to breathe and the audiences to think through what is going on!

Secondly, each clue is unfolded too quickly! It should allow audiences to process each clue and piece together the puzzles to guess who is the SUSPECT! In fact, this is a psychological thriller, it should thus confuse audiences more, especially Lau Ching Wan's role with his paranoid delusion and multiple-personality disorder, and challenge our ability to unfold the clues. Yet, it's made to look more like an action movie, revealing all things abruptly!

I gave 8/ 10. Overall, it's a great movie! I would highly recommend you to watch it in the cinema, to enjoy the tension and dynamic action, which you will NEVER get from your laptop or home TV. It's definitely worth your ticket money! Take my words! Go, Go, Go..!!