The Detective (2007)

The Detective (2007)
Director: Oxide Pang Chun
Writers: Oxide Pang Chun, Thomas Pang
Tam is a private detective. One day he gets an offer to find a woman named Sum. However every trace he gets ends up with a series of suicide...How does Sum link up with all the victims?
'Coming after 2 dull films Diary/Forest of Death and before the release of the big budget US versions of Bangkok Dangerous/The Eye the Pang bros manage to fit The Detective in. It's an entertaining but relatively light Thai based thriller starring Aaron Kwok as Tam (here showing a hansom cool almost like an Asian Brad Pitt). The plot for the first hour or so is one wild goose chase, private detective Tam is visited by a dying man to help track down a missing girl who later we learn is called Sum, all leads seem to be none helpful and the ones that maybe would have helped seem to be dead. Its not until the killer fears Tams getting too close and starts to try bump him off do we get any real tension. Its never boring but nothing like the hard modern day thrillers we've become used too its almost comic melodrama until the final, its very much dir. Oxide Pang clearly aiming for the mass market. In its credit does have a few neat ideas like the use of photos (though I could of lived without seeing Nokia products being so blatantly advertised) one great scene we pan around one during being taken only to find the rear of the people in the shot are white like the back of a photograph, I also liked how Tam almost always appeared in the shot alongside a clock to clearly point out he’s running out of time, I also loved that his detective agency is in an old run down cinema. Fun for what it is but its starting to feel like the Pangs are spreading their self too thin and pumping out anything, they're clearly choosing quantity instead of quality.'

(6 out of 10)