Mad Detective

Mad Detective is yet another terrific crime drama from the production house of Johnny To, this time directed by Wai-Ka Fai, who also teamed with him on Running on Karma, which starred Andy Lau in a muscle outfit, which was mildly disturbing. This is also an odd film, but the madness lies in its main character, Bun, played by Lau Ching-Wan, a police inspector who has the unusual ability to see the inner self or spirit of people. This paranormal power has made him a famed detective on the level of Sherlock Holmes, but his deductive ability comes not from logic but from raw emotion. He has to reenact a crime to feel it in the first person, and from there he can put together the pieces of the puzzle to solve a case. It also makes him crazy. He loses his wife -- also an investigator, but recreates her in his mind as a companion. He also loses his job when, during the departure of his long time boss, he offers his ear to him as a retirement present.

A year later, a cop comes to Bun in need of help. Ho Ka-On (Andy On), is involved in a case where a fellow cop has gone missing for many months. However, in a couple of recent crimes, a gun was used and analyzing the bullets, it was found that it belonged to the missing cop. Ho has been on this case for a long time, and is running out of leads. Bun, after arguing with his imaginary spouse, agrees to help. He finds that there were two different people who used the same gun, one being the cop's ex partner and an Indian criminal who was still at large. Bun intuits that the ex partner is the murderer, and after meeting him finds that he is a sick yet complex character, having seven different inner selves. But Bun's involvement in the case makes him more and more unstable -- while working with Ho, who is simulating the burying of the cop's body in a park, Bun steals Ho's badge and gun. He bursts into the local police office where the ex partner works, and rifles through his desk and locker. Bun believes that the ex partner had murdered the cop and had his gun stolen by the Indian crook, and has been after him ever since, to get his gun back. The gun he is currently using is the murdered cop's, and he switched the serial numbers on the computer. Ho doesn't learn any of this until very late in the game. He starts to lose faith in Bun, believing that Bun is stark raving mad, and is scared that this could end up badly for him and his career. After talking to Bun, Ho tries one last time to believe him, and arrests the ex partner, but since his gun's serial number matches the owner, now the ex partner, Ho comes to the conclusion that he made a terrible mistake. The ex partner is let go, and instead of filing charges, tells Ho that they are both after the same thing, to solve the crime and put the Indian behind bars. They head off together in search for the Indian, and on a tip, they find him in a building. Bun has followed them, still trying to convince Ho through the cell phone that the ex partner is the killer. There is a four way standoff in the warehouse, and the ex partner kills the Indian, who stated before he died that it has the ex partner who had killed the cop. Ho shoots Bun, thinking that Bun has lost it completely, and Bun kills the ex partner. But Ho realizes that Bun was right all along, and as Bun dies concocts a scheme to prove his story true and end the case.

Blind Mountain

A selected film for the 2007 Cannes Film festival, Blind Mountain is a disturbing look at a form of marriage in China. A young college graduate is looking for a job, and after several months with no results, is desperate to find work to help support her parents. She befriends a young woman who has a lead on work that would take them to the countryside for several months. But upon arriving at a remote farming village in the mountains, she is drugged and her ID papers and wallet are stolen. She wakes up, alone and in a house where the people there claim that they bought her to be the wife of their son. Horrified, she tries to escape, but everyone -- the family and the villagers, conspire to keep her there, and there is only one way in or out of the town. After a mini hunger strike, refusing to participate with her new family, she is raped by the son, who needs help from his friends to consumate the marriage. She accepts her situation only to be able to move about the town, and meets other young women who have also been abducted. Some have accepted their fate, having born several children; in one case, a woman was crippled to prevent from escaping. She befriends the village teacher, who benefited from only having a high school education, and also wants to leave the village. They have an affair, and plan an escape, but it becomes clear that he was using her sexually, making promises to leave but never doing so. Their affair is discovered, and he is exiled from the village. The young woman sends letters to her family, but they are intercepted and destroyed. She escapes twice, but is captured both times -- once on the mountain road, and the second right out of a bus in a large town many miles away. At no time anyone comes to help her from being abducted. Finally, she becomes pregnant and has the child, a son. If it was to be a daughter, the baby would have been drowned, like another child whose body was discovered in the nearby river. She makes friends with one of the children, who arranges to mail one of her letters. This time it goes through, and her father appears several moths later, with a police escort. But they meet such resistance from the villagers that the officials have to go back to the town to get reinforcements, and the father stays with his daughter. The family tries to steal her away again before the police come back, but while beating up the father, the young woman has had enough, and kills the husband with a knife.