In Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, Tsui Hark mixes martial arts and Sherlock Holmes-style sleuthing

Starring Andy Lau and Carina Lau, Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame marked a return to the fantasy wuxia genre for its director

The lead character is based on a real person, Di Renjie, although he’s unlikely to have had the martial arts and sleuthing skills we see. Two prequels followed

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Andy Lau as Di Renjie in a still from Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame. Tsui Hark’s 2010 fantasy wuxia film was a box-office hit and spawned two sequels.

Published: 4:15am, 2 Jun 2024Updated: 4:39am, 2 Jun 2024

Fans of Tsui Hark’s classic martial arts films from the 1990s – works that included the Once Upon a Time in China series – were thrilled when the director released Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame in 2010.

Not only did the film herald a return to form for the innovative director after a lean period in the early 2000s, it contained many of the hallmarks of Tsui’s earlier wuxia and kung fu works.

“Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame is the auteur’s most enjoyable picture in ages, the seventh-century shenanigans revealing flashes of Tsui at his most creative and coherent,” former Post critic Paul Fonoroff wrote in 2010.

The film was a box-office hit and spawned two prequels, Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon (2013) and Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings (2018).

英皇電影《狄仁傑之通天帝國》預告片

Although there were long gaps between the releases, and they varied slightly in style and presentation, the series kept its special flavour and all the movies provided top-notch entertainment.