Detective Chinatown (2015)

hyped garbage

How sad is this?

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

I'm not a huge fan of the films put out by mainland China, finding them flawed in various ways: either bogged down in appalling CGI, spoilt by unwanted propaganda, or packed with the lamest comedy imaginable. I thought the same would be true of DETECTIVE CHINATOWN, but it turns out to be a lot more enjoyable than I had hoped. The story follows a young, bland cop, played by a slightly wooden Liu Haoran, who is reejcted by the police and who heads off with his bizarre uncle to solve a murder case in Thailand. Said uncle is played by Wang Baoqiang, who I previously saw in the likes of BLIND SHAFT and KUNG FU KILLER, and he turns out to be perfectly cast. He's eccentric, over the top, very energetic, and most of all, funny. His character is pretty outrageous but he makes the film enjoyable and his long-running feud with a rival leads to the movie's greatest moments. Some of it is slow and sappy, but the lowbrow slapstick scenes are fun and there's some Jackie Chan-style action and a scene or two borrowed from THE RAID 2 which are very entertaining.

I must say Chinatown Detective is never the best detective film, but it's a good one. Funny, plot reasonably complicated, a twist in the end. Two young actors' performance is convincing enough, especially the girl. Her last scene really struck me and many other Chinese audiences. I doubt if those who didn't see any good out of it watched it throughout at all. It doesn't have the fanciest or epoch- breaking technical innovation, but neither do most filmmakers around the world. For instance, the gunfight in the hospital is a good scene. The escape from the police station might be a tribute to Jackie Chan's earlier films. There are many funny moments where I got good laughs. But not understanding the Chinese language will cause a problem to that. A few of the actors are renowned for their comedian work in their local dialect. The robber wearing glasses are famous for his comedies in his Northeastern dialect which is a big contrast to the location of the film. If a viewer doesn't understand Chinese or Thai, they might not know that the Thai police chief would give instructions in Thai but threaten to fire the two Chinese officers in Chinese.The humour isn't that Chinese people are making fun of Chinese people. It's that the safest joke you can ever make is about yourself. After all, character arrangements are only film characters. They're not always meant to be realistic, especially in the comedic bits. It's strange if anyone imagine all Chinese people will be so ridiculous as certain characters. There's also deep philosophy hidden in the film which I wonder how many Hollywood popular films have. If you don't watch Chinatown Detective carefully, you probably have entirely forgotten about the caption at the beginning of the film. In fact, the ending of the film or two young characters in the film is the evidence to the caption at the beginning. It is also in the discussion between the two youngsters. Therefore, whoever says this film is a complete failure or anyone who watches this is an idiot will be an idiot in my eyes, honestly. Reviewers like BasicLogic might lack basic logic in certain ways. If I don't like some film, I won't say this film is made of utter stupidity, because it's non-sense. Only seeing the problems in Chinese film industry instead of problems in their own film industry (I guarantee there must be some as there's no such thing as a perfect industry) is just biased and arrogant.Whoever says this film isn't funny at all, it's because people have different perception on humour. I never found Annie Hall funny. I thought The Hangover franchise or Due Date weren't so funny for my taste. But I enjoyed The Philadelphia Story and Divorzio all'Italiana. I don't think it's the best idea to judge negatively upon a comedy which is not your taste. (Not to mention you don't understand the Chinese language, which means you won't get any linguistic humour.) On the other hand, an art-house film or documentary lover shouldn't look down upon a good comedy simply because it was made to be entertaining. Ultimately, most films are made for entertainment. If you want to be high-brow, that's your own business. But don't laugh at others who want to have a good laugh.I would personally recommend this film. If there are people who hate it, that's not their fault. But that's not the film's fault either.

...i think this movie is OK for teenagers and people with low i.q. for once i agree with reviewer "basiclogic". this reviewer just kills all Chinese movies just-about. but....yah...this movie was that bad, i tried to stick it out but had to turn it off after 20 minutes. i was hoping it would be a really good comedy..but in the first 20 minutes i didn't get 1 laugh out of it. the movie is also stereotyping Chinese people but its a Chinese movie...thats low. this movie tries to be a gag a minute but after 20 minutes it wasn't working for me. its good for people who are racist against the Chinese. for all the good movies coming out of China you're going to get some bad ones too. its a shame really..Chinese making fun of Chinese..would be OK if it was funny, but it's not. watch at own risk...be warned.

This is not just a funny comedy, but also a well-made film with great quality. The actions,funny scenes,dialogues were orchestrated in such a great way that it drew every second of my attention.Wang Baoqiang did a great job in playing a character that is both silly and witty, wild and cowardly, someone you want to slap in the face but also give a dollar out of pity. I usually justify things in a quantitative way. And here is the math:The average driving speed of the vehicles in the movie is about 20% of the avg. driving speed in 007 Spectre; but the car chase scenes are five times more intense with the cars looking way faster that those in 007 Spectre.My opinion might be biased since I was able to "fully" understand the movie with my full Chinese proficiency, and I also thought Spectre was the worst 007 movie which totally wasted two hours of my life. Anyway, I thought this movie was a job well done.