The Detective 2

Oxide Pang

The story: The near-sighted private detective Tam (Aaron Kwok) looks into a series of seemingly unrelated grisly murders upon the request of his police inspector friend Fung Chak (Liu Kai Chi). Their ongoing investigation alternates with the story of a young boy who grows up to be disturbed and violent when he finds out the truth about his parentage.

Late in this sequel to his 2007 hit The Detective, writer-director Oxide Pang slips in a homage to Roman Polanski’s noir classic Chinatown (1974).

It is an unexpected moment of quirk which does not feel out of place given that the film is set in Thailand, with Thai extras milling about and Thai pop playing in the background, and yet the key protagonists are Hong Kong actors speaking in (dubbed-over) Mandarin.

There is a fascinatingly gritty sense of time and place evoked with nary a tourist attraction in sight. It probably helped that Hong Kong-born Pang had started his film career in Bangkok as a colourist.

A film, though, has to get more than the mood and setting right. And where The Detective 2 comes up short is in the story. The set-up of a seemingly unrelated series of grisly murders is promising, but the way that Tam has his eureka moments is far too convenient.

It is also not quite clear how the police narrowed down their list of suspects to a bunch of psycho cuckoos, including TV veteran Cheung Siu Fai’s broad turn as a volatile and mentally unstable man.

Still, the story is less preposterous than star Aaron Kwok’s previous crime thriller outing Murderer (2009), in which the villain is revealed to be an adult in the body of a child. In fact, Pang seems to be taking a dig at it when Tam asks incredulously at one point: “Is it possible for a kid to be a killer?”

It also helps that Kwok slips easily into the role of the smarter-than-he-looks scrappy investigator with severe myopia and there is a genial vibe to the friendship between Tam and Liu Kai Chi’s inspector Fung Chak.

The Detective 2 is a little more rooted in reality, minus the supernatural elements of the first instalment. However, Pang seems to be stuck in horror-film mode and the overly obvious music score can be rather distracting at times.

The ending leaves the way open for another sequel, one which would likely focus on Tam’s past and the mystery of his parents’ murders. The premise alone makes it seem like it would be worth investigating.

(ST)