Jason says: “I know
that I have made comments about how it’s a shame that we’ll likely only
see a good sleuth in one movie a few times in the past, but it seems
especially relevant here because the makers of BLIND DETECTIVE seem to
feel the same way. There are enough cases and subplots crammed
into this movie to give a TV series a pretty good start, and a manic
energy that makes it a terrific comedy as well as an intriguing mystery.
The blind detective of the title is Johnston Chong (Andy Lau Tak-wah),
an ex-cop forced into retirement by retinal detachment who spends his
time solving cold cases and hunting down fugitives for reward
money. It’s during one of these jobs – for which former partner
Szeto Fatbo (Guo Tao) poaches the credit – that he meets Goldie Ho
(Sammi Cheng Sau-man), a cop who is great at running suspects down but
not so much the puzzle-solving aspect. She wants to hire Johnston
to track down a friend who disappeared when they were teenagers in
1997, and he agrees – and starts using her as an assistant on some
other cases he’s got going.
“Because director Johnnie To and his collaborators at Milkyway Image
are best known for their lean, intense crime movies, it would be easy
to expect BLIND DETECTIVE to fall into that category. There are
certainly moments where it does – Johnston & Ho get involved in
some gruesome murder cases – but more often, it’s going for the big
belly laugh, whether it be from slapstick built around Johnston’s
blindness to full-scale knockabout humor. The characters banter
and bicker in roughly equal measure, and while they do take the
occasional moment to earnestly describe what motivates them, they are
not just serious people that ridiculous things happen to, but
characters driven by their own inherent goofiness.
“Andy Lau dives right into this as the title character; Johnston is
more than a little bit of a jerk, and Lau doesn’t underplay his
petulance or shallowness at all, even as he’s displaying a sharp wit
and fierce intelligence that makes the character charismatic and kind
of sexy. It’s the sort of comedic performance that often doesn’t
get the sort of credit it deserves, even though it’s got to be pretty
tricky to establish a character in just the right way that his waking
up in a strange room and walking smack into a wall is hilariously
deserved even if one does feel sympathy for him. Sammi Cheng is a
complementary sort of funny, playing Ho as eager and enthusiastic even
as she gets frustrated with her new partner. She’s good at the
slapstick, and something else again once Ho realizes that Johnston
really has no idea how attractive she is. It’s a fun twist on
this sort of relationship that the actors get to play out with looks
and expressions well before they express anything directly.
“They’ve got a fun, supporting cast, too, with Guo Tao, Lam Suet, and
Gao Yuan-Yuan special standouts – the latter somewhat surprisingly,
because she’s in a role that’s not often written and played as
funny. It’s always a good sign when a comedy gives even the
characters who could just be around to advance the plot some way to
make the audience laugh, and this movie succeeds in spades on that
account, to the extent that even a serial killer comes off as pretty
zany when Johnston & Ho track him down.
“And if that working out isn’t enough to convince you that Johnnie To
is one of the best and most capable directors working today (presuming
you didn’t already hold that opinion), I’m not sure what else could
convince you. The script by frequent collaborator Wai Ka-fai and
a number of co-writers is not the strongest he’s ever had, to the point
where it might have been a complete disaster with a lesser director at
the helm – it has some awkward jumps as both a mystery and a romantic
comedy, and there’s a point toward the end when things may tip too far
in one direction for anyone to reconcile. Instead, it’s a
surprisingly well paced and balanced movie, bouncing between four or
five sub-stories without losing track of the main thread and making
twisted jokes while still allowing the characters to be sincere.
The action is much closer to the nimble antics of SPARROW than the
serious, intense shootouts of EXILED
or DRUG
WAR, and To can turn from fighting to physical comedy to fantasy on
a dime.
“Indeed, looking at his recent output, there’s a part of me that
wonders if he’d prefer to make romantic comedies despite the fact that
crime pays, so to speak. Here, he’s disguised one as the other,
and while the result may not be one of his masterpieces, it is
tremendously entertaining. 4.5
cats
“Seen 15 June 2014 in the Museum of Fine Arts Remis Auditorium (New
Films from Hong Kong, DCP).” |
