Review of Mad Detective (2007) by Tsz Yeung Yvonne P — 28 Feb 2010

(Perhaps) nothing in the recent years of Hong Kong cinema comes quirkier and more inventive than Johnnie To and Wai Ka-Fai's much-anticipated team effort's return of MAD DETECTIVE, most certainly the best film of the year.

I mean, who could have thought that a crime thriller involves multiple split personality can be so much fun? This film did just that, with Johnnie To and Wai Ka-Fai offers everything up to their sleeve we have come to see their past work before, mixes them altogether and turns them inside out to breathe a new life out of the ordinary.

he most inventive aspect is how Johnnie To and Wai Ka-Fai plays out the multiple split personalities disorder by laying out a terrific trick of using multiple actors to portray different perspectives of a single person's personality.

Not only the idea is very clever, but they managed to broaden the aspect to turn their trick both fabulously offbeat and mesmerizingly complex, yet so effective without resulting into over-the-top silliness.

To top it all off, Lau Ching-Wan anchors the performance so hypnotizing you glued to his eccentric act from the minute one. Not only he pulls off one of his finest performances to date. The film's ending is also a certified classic, where Bun, Ho, Ko Chi-Wai and the Indian thief finally facing off against each other in a flat full of mirror, reflecting each of their own inner personalitiesand complete with a violent and stylish Mexican standoff.

A movie worth checking out for.