Mad Detective.

"Hong Kong genre-jumping auteur Johnnie To's films are invariably pretty and intelligent (though not always clear-headed and restrained), and his specific achievement here is in pushing neo-noir conventions (already a hyphenated set of narrative rules developed from Chinatown through Blade Runner, LA Confidential and beyond) into post-neo-noir territory," writes Benjamin Sutton in the L Magazine.

"Whereas Johnny To's gangster sagas are usually efficient, operatic and serious-minded, his frequent collaborations with co-writer and co-director Wai Ka-fai often come equipped with some goofy supernatural twist," notes Nick Schager in Slant. "In the duo's latest, Mad Detective, the conceit is that detective Bun (Lau Ching-wan) is an investigative ace as well as a complete loon who reenacts crimes in order to crack them and claims to be able to see people's 'inner personalities.'"

Updated through 7/21.

"Though some of the movie's charms are at times forced, Mad Detective has enough consummate film style to make many of the narrative bumps more or less irrelevant," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "Among its most sustained pleasures is its clever attention-grabbing idea that Bun may actually be able to see the real personalities lurking inside other people. The filmmakers don't bother to plumb the depths of this revelation, poking about Bun's existential turmoil and whatnot. Instead, they just go as gloriously overboard as their detective at his best and sometimes worst, specifically by unleashing a dazzling riff on the funhouse climax of Orson Welles's Lady From Shanghai. It really has to be seen before it can be believed."

"Mad Detective is genre exercise through and through, humor and pathos enabled with supreme precision due to the psychic-tint on a traditional internal affairs plotline, which distracts from the conventions with the feats, pathetic and fantastic, of Lau's weary, optimistic/depressive schizo," writes Daniel Kasman in the Auteurs' Notebook. And its "wacky distraction is playing a darker kind of game than one may think."

"Apart from its inventive depiction of the weaknesses that tough guys try to hide, Mad Detective is a slight work from the wildly prolific To," writes Jim Ridley in the Voice. "But as the directors amuse themselves in devising new ways to visualize schizophrenic dementia - casting a half-dozen different actors as the suspect's splintered psyche in a kind of psychotic entourage - the movie makes deadpan sport of its convolutions."

"Compared to the fire that drove the Election films and the pyrotechnics of Exiled the far more character oriented Mad Detective can feel much smaller than it really is," writes Todd Brown at Twitch. "The emphasis here is not on style, camera tricks or action - though there is a healthy dose of that - but on the portrayal of a man lost in his own mind and taken on those terms Mad Detective is a resounding success."

Running on Karma "had romance, humor, kung fu, motorcycle chases, a Taoist plea for peace, time travel, Sikhs hiding in small tin cans and, most importantly, Andy Lau in a muscle suit," recalls Simon Abrams in the New York Press. "Four years later, Wai and To's Mad Detective continues to push the limits of their viewers' sanity with more brilliant images and ideas than you can process all in one sitting."

The AV Club's Noel Murray finds that "a certain baseline ludicrousness keeps it from being as effortlessly entertaining as To's best."

"It's a metaphysical mystery masquerading as a doodle," writes Joshua Rothkopf in Time Out New York.

For Filmmaker, Nick Dawson emails To to ask him "about genre, auterism and his reshaping of Hong Kong cinema."

R Emmet Sweeney talks with To for IFC.

Earlier: Reviews from Venice and Toronto.

Update: "The film's biggest surprise is how seriously it ultimately takes its premise," writes Steve Erickson in Gay City News. "Apart from its final reel, Mad Detective never seems completely sure of what it's doing, but there's something exciting about its refusal to settle into either a silly comedy or a hard-boiled thriller."

Update, 7/21: Peter Martin lives in Dallas and doubts Mad Detective will ever make it to a theater in Big D. So he tries out the VOD option: "For one thing, IFC in Theaters is only available in standard definition, so the picture looks only so-so, even on my 26-inch high-def monitor. On the other hand, the service allowed me to see a movie I very much wanted to see, without delay."

Posted by dwhudson at July 18, 2008 8:12 AM