Mad Detective

Bun, a retired detective, can see the personalities inside people: he physically sees the seven versions of a man walking beside him. A young inspector brings him a case of a missing officer. Whether what Bun sees is true or whether he is ill is something the film never settles. Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai directed. Lau Ching-wan plays Bun, Andy On the young inspector. The idea is translated straight into cinema: the personalities inside a character are played by separate actors who walk beside him in the same scene. The audience sees what Bun sees and nobody else does. The hall of mirrors shootout is the most remembered sequence and a typical example of To's use of space. It played in competition at the Venice Film Festival in 2007. It is among the most formally adventurous Hong Kong crime films of the period; the genre shape is kept while the telling is entirely experimental. Who it is for: viewers who like Johnnie To and formal play inside genre. Who it is not for: anyone wanting realistic procedure; the film keeps reality deliberately uncertain.