Detective vs. Sleuths

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...

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.

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..!!

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 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)