Apparently, Hong Kong has more serial killings than your average season of “CSI” … who knew? This film begins with two –I want to say “unsolved” cases, but that’s not quite right … tell me, if a case is solved errantly but to the satisfaction of the police, does it remain “unsolved?” Well that’s what we’re up against in this unique and violent Hellscape of cops and robbers and cop-robbers.
The two cases are as follows: one in which a man accused of butchering many, many bodies is executed at his home where some of the bodies are buried and another involving a triple cop-killing in a back alley in which we can see that the assassin used the body of one cop as a shield to kill the cops shooting at him and then made it look like he was never there, as if the cops just all killed one-another. Wow, that’s complicated just from a writing perspective.
Naturally, the detectives get the story wrong, but one cop knows exactly what happened. That cop is “The Chosen Sleuth,” aka Chun Lee (Ching Wan Lau). Unfortunately, Hong Kong’s version of Dirty Harry likes to insubordinate first and address justice later … showing up at the press conference with a woman handcuffed to the back seat of his minivan (?!), Chosen breaks into the room and immediately starts yelling, shooting, re-enacting the crime –including shoving a loaded gun into the mouth of a colleague- and then accusing the head detective of “fishy” detective work. Let’s hope he at least got the right press conference. (“Um, sir, this is about low income housing” “I’m so dreadfully embarrassed.”) Bottom line – nothing was solved, but he made a whole room full of cops and reporters rather distressed.
Turns out, you can be removed from the force for pulling a stunt like that. Again, who knew?
The story then flips several years ahead in time in which the words of The Chosen Sleuth have been –literally- written 
on the subway walls, and a small group of Chosen Sleuth vigilantes have taken to addressing mistakes made in the original case in murder and leaving the police case number at the crime scene to tell the cops why they did what they did. But before you can even ask “how do these dudes know police case numbers?” something else violent happens and a murder of policemen is sent elsewhere to have a shoot ‘em up. It’s all terribly clever and terribly confusing at the same time.
At its best, Detective vs Sleuths is an intriguing thriller; at its worst, Detective vs Sleuths reminded me of the first time I saw a home video shot by my eight-year-old brother … no story, just a bunch of dudes running around on camera. In a word, this film is chaotic and I honestly don’t think it gets any better if I didn’t need to read the subtitles. I’m rating Detective vs. Sleuths as an ambitious mess. Simpler story, better editor and you might have a decent police procedural thriller. This, however, is insane.
There once was a supercop named Jun
Who knew where all the clues had been strewn
But instead of dectectin’
There was blustery injectin’
And had his legend burst like a balloon
Not Rated, 101 Minutes
Director: Ka-Fai Wai
Writer: Lu Jia, Li Jie, Ka-Fai Wai
Genre: Stories nobody believes are true
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Action junkies
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Genuine detectives, I imagine
