UK Release Date: 18-07-2008
UK Certificate: 15
Director: Johnnie To and Wai Ka Fai
Country: Hong Kong

A prize-winning box office hit from leading Hong Kong director Johnnie To (Election, Breaking News) in collaboration with Wai Ka Fai, Mad Detective puts a giddy spin on the police film genre. It stars Lau Ching Wan as Inspector Bun, a gifted, if unconventional, detective who is sacked after cutting off his ear and presenting it to his chief as a gift, but then rescued from his enforced retirement by a young hotshot cop who goes to him for help in solving an intractable case.

Bun favours intuition over logic, imagining himself into other people’s minds – he forms his hands into a gun and pretends to shoot people, has himself thrown down stairs in a suitcase, and is buried alive. And he claims to be able to see people’s inner personalities. In this case, his suspect has a multiple personality – seven, to be exact, all played by different actors.

Our view of Bun comes chiefly from his sidekick, Inspector Ho, and we share his confusion as to whether Bun truly is super­naturally gifted, or wildly insane. His remarkable insight would point to special powers; his lack of concern for his personal safety and his fantasy wife, for example, suggest otherwise. Lau Ching Wan plays Bun brilliantly, all crazed energy and puffy-faced bemusement; there’s something childlike and simple about him, with his fusion of ‘real’ and supernatural or imagined worlds, and his frustrat­ion that others don’t see as he does.

Mad Detective’s wit, ambiguity and confounding of audience expectations makes for a layered, engagingly twisted consideration of the line between inspiration and insanity.