Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame

Tsui Hark's Tang dynasty detective film. The lead is a real historical figure: Di Renjie, a seventh-century statesman known in the West as Judge Dee through Robert van Gulik's novels. The year is 689-690, and Wu Zetian is about to take the throne as China's first female emperor. A colossal Buddha is being raised for her coronation. Then people begin to burst into flame from the inside. The empress has Dee brought out of the prison she exiled him to years earlier, because he once opposed her, and orders him to solve it. The film mixes whodunit with wuxia, and Sammo Hung choreographed the fights. The solution really is built as a puzzle, so the gaps between the fights are not empty. Andy Lau plays Dee, Carina Lau the empress, and Li Bingbing her loyal guard. It played in competition at Venice in 2010. Who it is for: viewers who like outsized production, vast digital sets and Tsui Hark's pace. Who it is not for: anyone who stumbles on digital effects. The image occasionally slips into looking like a game, and the plot unties rather too many knots in its last act.