Review of Mad Detective (2007) by Pampalini L — 19 Apr 2012

I give a lot praised to director Johnnie To as he personally a favorite of mine for his style, direction, and creative story telling. While I?m familiar with his work in the action genre, he proves once again he can tackle other genre with the same level of greatness.

Mad Detective is about rookie cop teams up with a former detective with a supernatural gift to hunt down a serial killer. During the viewing of Mad Detective its protagonist, Inspector Chan, was more interesting than I expected. He`s an unusual detective and unlike anyone I've seen before. He has some unusual methods to solving cases as he has a gift for seeing a person inner personality. This is effectively use throughout the since we see what this character is physically seeing, but it does get tedious and overused throughout its length. The story is well written, though the case is not as interesting characters themselves. As I've come to expect in Johnnie To movies, the female characters don't have a big impact on the story. While it's certainly an improvement that the female characters help us learn about our main character unlike To other movies, they don't have much of an impact on the story. The character themselves are interesting through Chan point of view as we get as it adds another dimension to these character who don't all appear as they look. As much as I liked the character of inspector Chan, some will find him unrealistic. One notable example include Chan cutting his ear and giving it to his retiring boss as a gift. Its story driven by interesting that help move the movie forward. Even if the case is not as interesting as our characters, they help overlook that flaw.

To direction is spot on as usual with him always bringing the highest level of direction in his movie. The cast is terrific, especially Sean Lau Ching-Wan as Inspector Chan who brings brings a lot energy into the movie and character he portrays. He's easily, in my opinion, the best and most interesting of the cast. You do get to see some familiar faces if you've seen To other work, but thankfully he worked with other actors to prevent repetition. The climax of Mad Detective has easily has the best cinematography in the whole movie and its impressive in the way it's filmed.

Mad Detective has interesting characters that save movie from it boring case and not so interesting case. Mad Detective is certainly not for everyone, but it?s worth a watch for Sean Lau Ching-Wan performance and portrayal of Inspector Chan.