Detective vs. Sleuths (Wai Ka-fai, 2022) (Patreon)

A film does not have to make sense in order to be compelling. However, it's good if there's a compelling reason not to make sense. The late films of Alexei German are a good example. Whether he was trying to convey the labyrinthine paranoia of the Soviet inner circle (Khroustaliov, My Car!) or the Breughel-like depravity of a revivified Middle Ages (Hard to Be a God), German adopted the approach of bombardment, aiming to provide the maddening impression or ambiance of civilization's end. One would almost certainly fail if trying to grasp everything onscreen on a first, or even a second viewing. Best to let the horror wash over you.

This bombardment style is the best description I can offer of Detective vs. Sleuths, the directorial comeback of Wai Ka-fai, frequent screenwriter and co-director for the great Johnnie To. I suppose it could help to understand this film as the third entry in a very loose trilogy of films about uniquely compromised police officers, following Mad Detective (2007) and Blind Detective (2013). Like those films, Detective vs. Sleuths is centered on one man, Jun Lee (Sean Lau), who alone is capable of breaking through routine, procedure, and corruption to deliver justice. But part of what makes this film so uniquely challenging is that Wai has exponentially increased the number of players on the board.

Detective vs. Sleuths is the sort of film that is so complicated, and involves so many double- and triple-crosses and misdirections, that every ticket sold should come with a corkboard, pushpins, and twine. And while there is indeed a major conspiracy at the heart of Wai's film, it is so jumbled with myriad other plots and subplots that eventually it's all beside the point. Wai isn't trying to tell a cops-and-criminals story; he is producing an explosive cinematic Guernica about the current state of Hong Kong, the shifting allegiances and hidden agendas, the vulgar exercise of power, and the fact that, cliche though it might be, the sane man will be considered insane in a mad world.

The film starts with a prologue thirteen years before the main action. The Hong Kong detective squad, led by Auyeung (Tan Kai), are holding a press conference to announce the conclusion of a high-profile cop killer case. We see the crime in the film, and we know that the detectives have fallen into the killer's trap, mistaking a hostage for the actual murderer. Racing into the press conference on his ramshackle bike, Jun Lee shouts Auyeung down, explaining exactly how the crime was committed. In the confusion, he grabs a gun, and is eventually subdued by the HK cops. "I am a detective!" he shouts. "I solve every case!"

We soon learn Jun Lee's backstory. He was indeed the best detective on the force, until the evil of the world, embodied by a vicious flying dragon, drove him to insanity. Put another way, where his fellow police could only see this or that crime or criminal, Jun Lee became obsessed with the idea that evil was triumphing over good, and no one else could even see this stark fact. As the main story begins, we see that Jun Lee is homeless, a raving schizophrenic who has an area under an overpass where he stores dozens of handwritten placards, articulating details from numerous unsolved (or mis-solved) serial murders. 

But something happens that reignites Jun Lee's demand that his manic, vision-laden detective work be taken seriously again. He starts seeing killers, people who he knows went unpunished for their crimes. And they are pleading with Jun Lee to help him prevent their murders. It seems that family members of the victims have formed an urban posse, the Sleuths, who are killing the killers, meting out the rough justice that Jun Lee could not produce. 

Those who do not dismiss Jun Lee's ravings out of hand come to assume he is the  Dexter-like killer, since he races to every murder scene, locating the bodies with ease. (That's because the ghosts of the criminals are telling him where to go.) Even when it becomes apparent that Jun Lee's premonitions are correct, his delusional contributions -- firing a finger-gun, shouting at the victims' ghosts -- are mostly considered a hindrance. Only one detective, Yee Chan (Charlene Choi) agrees to work with Jun Lee, as she understands that however undisciplined he may be, the man has a gift. 

Much later in the film, we learn Yee Chan's backstory as well. She was the one victim who escaped from a notorious serial killer, and with the guidance of the detective who rescued her, future husband Fong Lai Shun (Raymond Lam), she joins the force as a way to exorcise her demons. Unsurprisingly, Jun Lee figures out that her demons are much closer than she realizes. Where everyone else sees bravery and civic virtue, he alone recognizes a sadistic maniac.

I have not even gotten to Jun Lee's daughter Lynn Cheung (Jeana Ho), who veers between wanting to thwart her father and prove his brilliance, or her connection to the apparent leader of the Sleuths, or the fact that she is also a detective on the HK force. Numerous cases fly by, actors play double roles, and it's often next to impossible to tell who's who. Is this person an actual detective, a sleuth, or a criminal? What crime are we even on at this point? And which characters know what we know, and which know things that we do not?

While it is rather reductive to simply see this chaos as an allegory for the present situation in Hong Kong, Wai's dedication to narrative impossibility, and the blatant disregard of living history in favor of convenient, authoritarian half-truth, makes it hard to ignore. And really, the proof is in the film itself, the way that Wai dangles solutions just out of our reach, always tempting us with coherence but adamantly refusing it. Violence and corruption are the coin of the realm in Detective vs. Sleuths, and the very title makes this clear. Typically, we think detectives and sleuths are the same thing, and to an extent, they are here. 

But the difference isn't  authority versus marginality. Jun Lee and the Sleuths are both ostensibly outside of official channels. It's a question of narrativity, or organization. We rightly consider conspiracy theory to be a flaw in thinking, the sign of a paranoia that demands that random events assume some logical order. But in this film, the order of things has been perverted, and only a figure completely outside of normative society, the madman, is free to declare what others refuse to see.