Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame 狄仁杰之通天帝国

Rating:	★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Mystery & Suspense

Man oh man, it's like reliving through the DGI RPG back in CHF ...

Tang Dynasty intrigues ... martial artists with cool moves and exotic weapons ... enigmatic allies who might turn against you without a blink ... and LJM babes who either want to kill you or bed you ... and when they're through, you still can't tell which ...

What spoils it all for the movie was not the colossal statue (通天浮屠) they supposedly built but making the (second) Imperial Capital Luoyang out to be port city with deep waters more akin to Canton ... and 3-masted East Indiaman (or man-o-war) ships sailing 1,000 years ahead of their time.

Hey, maybe the movie was not set in our Earth's historical China but in an alternate reality ... yeah, that'd work.

I did enjoy cameos by Richard Ng (吴耀汉) and Teddy Robin (泰迪罗宾) though ...

Okay, back to the movie itself.

Di RenJie (Dee) had been imprisoned for some 8 years for opposing Wu Zetian's assuming the regency.

As Wu prepared for ascending the throne, two of her courtier involved in inspection of a colossal statue outside the palace mysteriously burst into flames.

A talking deer ... some avatar of the Imperial Chaplain (who came up with *that* translation) ... spoke to her to rehabilitate Dee and assign him to investigate the case.

Dee who had been serving menial labour in charge of burning unwanted Court missives had managed somehow not only to pretend to be blind, but also to read all the missives all these years and kept in tune with development in the empire.

Just before Wu's emissary, Shangguan Jing'Er (上官静儿, a fictional character, modelled after the historical Shangguan Wan'Er), arrived, masked assassins came to kill Dee, who had somehow long prepared for this day - expecting that should he be summoned back to Court, he'd face attempts on his life first.

A brief moment of levity was presented from Dee's exchange with his old fellow prisoner, commenting that life outside would not be necessarily better.

Aided by two officials, Shangguan Jing'Er and Pei DongLai (裴东来, from Ministry of Justice), Dee followed the first clue to the murder, which ironically was provided by the second wave of assassins who came after him.

The trail led to the underground Phantom City (鬼市) beneath Sui-Dynasty built Luoyang ... supposedly built from ancient ruins of the original Zhou Dynasty city Luo which sank over the centuries. Cool, I can relate to that. Forgotten Realms from TSR also got the underground city of Skullport. Unfortunately, little was actually seen from the city - and the boatman was a total rip-off from the Greek Mythology Charon.

Next cool thing was the use of needles to distort facial muscles to present a totally new face ... which incidentally gave Dee another clue.

Snowylady made the connection there ... but I was still fuming over the harbour scene and didn't.

When DongLai found the clues to the reason for the mysterious murders, I thought I knew the answer ... the giant statue was going to act as a super-weapon, redirecting and concentrating the sun-rays into destructive beams.

Well, the truth was a little more prosaic, but I guess that'd work too. They'd need something to balance the "assault deers" ...

As for the unmasking of the mastermind, it was kind of a giveaway to those familiar with the actors ...

Overall, enjoyed the show, but just can't get over the stupid harbour scene which was put in to show how cosmopolitan Luoyang was during Tang but to me became the fatal weakness of the show.