Double Vision

Stylish hybrid of serial killer and supernatural horror flicks is well shot and fairly slick, with mostly good acting and some mild suspense. Tony Leung Kar-fei is soulful and very effective as the troubled police officer who is partnered up with FBI agent David Morse. While usually a fine actor, Morse seems out of synch with the rest of the cast--which seems appropriate for his character, at least initially, since he is the unwanted lone American lending his expertise to resentful Chinese police. Unfortunately, as is usually the case with English language characters in Hong Kong movies, his dialogue sucks and the director doesn't seem to have a clue of how to direct his non-Chinese cast member. The murders are kind of ridiculous, colorful but impossible unless the supernatural is involved, making the movie's early attempts to provide a scientific basis for the deaths seem like a ludicrous waste of time. Still, Double Vision is fairly creepy and effective for most of it's length, building to a shockingly violent confrontation in a Taoist Temple that was constructed within the walls of normal looking office building. The scene is good but would have been even more effective without several obvious and not very good computer effects that are both unnecessary and distracting. (Why do a decapitation with a computer effect and make it look like something out of a Playstation game when old fashioned make-up effects look so much better?) Unfortunately after this scene Double Vision goes completely off the rails, going on for an unnecessary twenty minutes more filled with trippy effects and seemingly endless scenes that make no sense. All in all this one's more than worth a look, but it could have been a lot better.

DOUBLE VISION is a weird little serial killer film from Taiwan with some surrealistic touches and some memorably gruesome set-pieces. The clear influence here is SEVEN, which comes as no surprise during this era, although I was also more than reminded of THE X-FILES as DOUBLE VISION has the same kind of spirit of investigation as it charts the two cops going after a serial killer who employs a very unusual method.

This is a slick, glossy production which works well and keeps you watching just because the plot elements are so unusual and bizarre. It's not the type of film that you'd describe as a classic and it's not really one that sticks in the mind either, but it works well enough and keeps you watching throughout. Tony Leung is expectedly good as the lead but the real stand-out is imported American star David Morse, one of the most underrated character actors working today, and of course he's excellent here.

This film had an engaging premise. A murderer is shooting pellets laced with a mite-bearing, extremely hallucinogenic mold into air conditioners of intended victims. The victims then destroy themselves in a manner orchestrated by their killer.

Now here is the disappointing part... The film could not decided if it was going to remain a mystery or a supernatural thriller. Unfortunately, by the time the credits rolled, I really didn't care.

There are several different sub-plots traveling straight together in the first half of the film. Tony Leung Ka Fai plays a cop failing to cope with the attempted murder of his daughter and the suicide of a corrupt fellow officer he helped bring to justice. His daughter won't speak and his neglected wife is seeking a divorce. Amid the murders, Leung Ka Fai learns that a FBI agent specializing in behavioral science and assigned to work with him, has been summoned by his superiors for show. One of his fellow detectives alludes to this and that the government might have a malevolent purpose behind this. The investigation points towards supernatural forces, and we are led into a temple where we witness a murder take place in the midst of what appears to be a Taiwanese Satanic ceremony.

All this flies straight together, but then each veers off in a separate direction, and in order to make sense and keep up with the story line, the viewer needs "double vision."

When Edgar Allan Poe wrote Rue Morgue and other Dupin stories, he is said to have created two branches of the detective-novel: the sensational and the deductive. Trying to reconcile elements of the detective with the supernatural the way traditional Taiwan has married Westernization, DOUBLE VISION--quite the adequate title--is a hybrid worth watching for its bastardy. The detective part suffers when the movie ventures into the supernatural, and the former has holes of its own without the latter. However, once you've taken the Red Pill and bought the protagonist's story about his daughter, these holes in logic somewhat become intrinsic to elements of the supernatural, and the unexplained becomes the unexplainable that is plainly accepted. This fallacy grows on the film like the hallucinatory mold the plot revolves around, and DOUBLE VISION gains dreamy and poetic dimensions. Undoubtedly, this is not the deductive type of mystery--the cancer of sensationalism is as terminal as a brain tumor better left not operated: it is the entire charm of the movie.

Here's one of these films that must of gone unnoticed in it's two week running. This would have to be one of the most overlooked films of 2002. We have two great male leads for starters who play good off each other. Taiwanese cop, Leung (always impressive) becomes obsessed with this case involving bizarre instances and deaths, if stylish, some in graphic detail that all lead to some fungus which has made it's way into the brain of the victims. Morse, strong here again in these roles, plays a FBI serial killer profiler, who teams up with Leung where he almost becomes more concerned with the destruction of Leung's family, than this mind wracking case. It involved a standoff that went horribly wrong, involving a family member, from which Leung's little daughter has gone mute. It's good too that we have the family angle, and more lighter, happier moments with Leung's family and Morse, who puts him in place, regarding his lovely wife, child. This film will cause you to use your noggen, even more so towards it's bleak end. Double Vision has some very violent scenes, I warn you, one involving a priest being disemboweled, as a few quite graphic be headings in a temple. This violence quite caught me by surprise. This is a supernatural violent, and imaginative thriller of a higher order, and damn well engrossing. If you're a supernatural horror freak or not, as not ever hearing of this one, hunt it down. I'm sure you'll be pleasantly surprised.