Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

The Hong Kong  team of Johnnie To and Ka-Fai Wai found a lot for Lau Ching-Wa, the laconic and unorthodox police negotiator in both their "Running Out of Time"  movies in "Sun taam" (Mad Detective: the Chinese title means more "Wonderful Detective," though "mad" is apt/descriptive). 

Lau was Inspector Ho in the “Running Out of Time” movies. Andy On (star of "The Kumite," he played a small role in To’s “Triad Election”)  plays the Inspector Ho in "The Mad Detective." Ho is working on the case of a policeman who disappeared in the woods 18 months earlier and whose gun has been used in quite diverging robberies (a $6000 convenience store one following a $1.5 million armored truck one), and seeks out Inspector Bun (Lau) who solved any cases by getting in the physical place of crime victims (including in a suitcase knocked down stairs and being buried alive).

Bun cut off his ear when his chief (silver-haired Eddy Ko) retired (to become a restaurantier) and was forced to retire. He is off his medications and acting crazier than ever, frightening most of the police force, but Ho needs help really badly!

Bun sees seven personalities (one female) in the missing policeman’s partner Ko Chi-Wai (Lam Ka-Tung, Yip Man). The viewer mostly sees what he sees, with some abrupt shifts to people and events that he is not imagining.

Before what is something of a Johnie To trademark, a "Mexican standoff" between four men with guns, there is an homage to the mirror shootout of Orson Welles's "Lady from Shanghai" (with not only mirror images but all seven personalities of Ko Chi-Wai and four guns instead of two).

The multiple personalities and Bun's hallucinations of his wife (Kelly Lin) make the movie often seem to be a ghost story rather than a police investigation movie, even with insights of someone (Bun) who seems at least as psychotic as psychic certain that a policeman (still on the job) is a robber, murderer, and schizophrenic. (The personalities Bun sees would be enough to drive most anyone crazy, and it seems he has been right in case after case.)

When an (ex-)wife with corporeal reality that can be seen by all shows up, things get even more confusing.

To/Wai have often demonstrated a very quirky sense of humor and Lau seems ot have been born to realize unorthodox police methods. I liked On’s "What have I gotten myself into?" doubts and the final scene in which he must redistribute props for what will be the official story

The visual panache of To/Wai movies is again realized by the great Cheng Siu Keung. (Arthur Wong won the Hong Kong Film Award for cinematography for Peter Chan’s “Warlords”; Jet Li beat Lau for the best-actor award in that too, though Wai’s screenplay won). The stylish visuals augment  Lau’s strong performance, as do appearances by other To/Wai regulars, and a lot of plot (perhaps too much, but after the opacity Tsai Min-Liang's "Wayward_Cloud" I’m not going to complain about something I at least think I understand!)

To speaks at length in Cantonese for a "making of" bonus feature, but without English subtitling being available. The trailer has English text.

Though very inventive, and the top-grossing film in Hong Kong in 2007. I prefer "Exiled" and "Running Out of Time" from among many very stylish Johnnie To movies of the last decade.

©2009, Stephen O. Murray

4 lean-n-mean 8

My other Johnnie To epinions:
The Mission (1999)
Running Out of Time (1999)
Where a Good Man Goes (1999)
Fulltime Killer 2001
PTU (2003)
Love for all Seasons (2003)
Running on Karma (2003
Throwdown (2004)
Breaking News (2004)
Election (2005)
Triad Election (2006)
Exiled (2006)

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age