Jim Directed by Johnny To. Brilliant, hilarious and nerve wracking.Everything gets thrown into the plot. Blind detective, betrayed by partner, teams up with a young female cop, a missing teenager, serial killers, a jilted woman, an on-screen birth, thrills and spills.Hong Kong's Sherlock Holms. Depends on empathy rather than deduction.As sharp as Zatoichi's blade.Terrific performances by Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng. Strong supporting cast.I rarely give a rating of 8/10. This is one movie I can recommend.

Pamela Luo After 7 years waiting, Johnnie To finally successfully reunited Sammi Cheng and Andy Lau as a couple again, which with no doubt, worth the weight of fans' expectation. I personally is a big fan of Sammi Cheng since I was in junior school, she technically 'disappear' like about 5 or 6 years from Hong Kong entertainment with all the ups and downs of her life buzzing beneath paparazzi's papers. Just about when people getting to forget her voice and smile, she suddenly came back to life with eye-catching Blind Detective.Being one of the top directors in Hong Kong showbiz, Johnnie To's definitely smart. He produced Drug War last year using Louis Koo and another mainland Chinese actor Sun Honglei as leading actors, which in my perspective, somehow lost the eye-catching element in the first place, though the story is not bad, and actually, it's really a nice film, even better than Blind Detective. Sammi Cheng and Andy Lau, the magic couple in screen lightening all chemistries between them on fire, make this movie on the right track of being a huge success both in box office and in the acting itself. Sammi Cheng plays her usual role- blur girl and effortlessly presenting a cute character, while Andy Lau jumps out of his comfort zone to play a retired blind detective who majors a foodie, instead of a disciplined police officer, both of them make the characters alive as requested. Though Andy Lau joins some other terrible movies these years, such as Switch, this one isn't one of them. He totally deserves applause as much as he's in Running Out of Time and Infernal Affairs. And I agree with other reviewers that the plot sag for this film is the unrequited love of Andy Lau towards the tango dancer who featured by mainland Chinese actress Gao Yuanyuan, this scene is flavorless no matter how gorgeous Gao Yuanyuan is. I can understand why Johnnie To adds this arc as it's tailor-in for the mainland China market (the same reason using Guo Tao as the police officer, who is also from mainland China), however, I cannot deny the fact that these irrelevant characters dragged down the whole level of the movie a little bit. As a fan of traditional Hong Kong production movies, I really hate it that every single movie has to have a mainland Chinese actor/actress nowadays, and the worst part is, almost every one of these characters seems to be ponderous, irrelevant, abrupt and if not for the marketing purpose, they will definitely not exist at all. All in all, the movie is good and above the average level, comparing to other movies in the cinema which are completely nonsense to me.

lasttimeisaw Johnnie To's latest film marks a long-anticipated reunion of Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng, the rom-com triad has chalked up magical box-office draw and successes in the Aughts (most victorious ones are LOVE ON A DIET 2001, 7/10 and NEEDING YOU… 2000, 8/10), and after a 9- year-hiatus (since YESTERDAY ONCE MORE 2004, 6/10), this "iron triangle" has notched up an inspiring comeback which ingeniously imbues a lighthearted rom-com into an out-of-left-field detective thriller with an adequate whodunit revelation in the end.For international territory, Johnnie To is mostly appreciated by his grim and stylized portrayal of Hong Kong's crime and gangster underbellies, a patriarch ruling world of ambitious figures seeking for money, women and power, but his collaboration with Lau and Cheng is a consistent offshoot from To and his own MILKY WAY IMAGE COMPANY's prolific filmography, not to mention is his most popular and profitable ones. So the innovation banks on how To would mingle his trademark darker traits into the audience-friendly couple (Lau and Cheng, indicates their 7th on-screen alliance as lovers), which could allure both To's hardcore fans and a wider general appeal from a maturer demography. Judging by the finished film, the tentative stab is a smart move, BLIND DETECTIVE is on its way of becoming To's most money-earning film in mainland China market (previously the record was just freshly held by To's earlier drug-cartel undercover drama DRUG WAR 2012).A posh Andy Lau, a former police officer who has been blind in lieu of his negligence of his own health in order to track suspects, teamed with a wealthy policewoman (Cheng), who is obsessed with the disappearance of her friend 20 years ago, together they manage to crack a few unsolved cases while put their own lives in danger. For Lau's method of deducing, if you are familiar with the new series HANNIBAL, imaging oneself at the murder scene and incarnating one's identity as the culprit to visualize what had happened is not new, but the mind-cum-body default (Lau is the mastermind while Cheng is the right-hand woman does all the action labor) works wonder here, with Cheng's ongoing crush on Lau, the pair sparks off a flavorful rib-tickling screwball casualness allies with the horrid cases they are working on, a superb visual stunt comes from the mortuary slaughter, gallows humor galore. Sammi Cheng is burdened with a great quantity of physical endeavor out of her slim frame, furthermore she is exhorted to deliver her career-best stretches as the film demands, i.e. the myriad avatars of heartbroken female victims, and her comical timing with Lau is another linchpin to the success. Lau, an epicure more than a sleuth, is amiable and emits his deadly debonair all over the devil-may-care script. Among supporting roles, mainland players Tao Guo and Yuanyuan Gao are sidelined only as comic relief, while a cocktail of veteran Hong Kong thespians is shortchanged by the brevity of their presence. Strictly speaking, the process of disclosing the perpetrators is not as cogent as it seems, the hyperbole of Lau's knack (against his blindness) is sometimes pulling audiences out of the picture a bit, but BLIND DETECTIVE is a paradigm of To and his team's great attempt to concoct a genre-blender which is both entertaining and ruminative, it is an earnest piece of work, a precious gem considering the plight of China's mainstream cinema (potboilers are brimful while the market is rising at an exponential rate), Johnnie To, is the last straw of the once-glorious Hong Kong film industry and he is the trailblazer refuses to compromise or pander for the unique policy-oriented requirements, calling for emulators and successors.

ctowyi Johnston (Andy Lau) is the blind detective and Ho Ka Tung (Sammi Cheng) is his side- kick. Due to a case of retina displacement, Johnston is blind but being blind has honed his sixth sense - imagination. He picks up cold police cases which offer monetary rewards to solve. Ka Tung needs his help to solve the mysterious disappearance of her best friend back in 1997. Together they form a cute partnership where Johnston used her to solve his cold cases, while Ka Tung longs for the day the mystery of her missing friend is solved and that Johnston will finally 'see' her. Earlier this year I have already seen Johnnie To's Drug War. Though excellent, it feels politically sanitized and doesn't quite fit into To's usual oeuvre. Blind Detective is a definite 'welcome back' film from him but sadly it isn't in the gangster vein. It's To doing rom-com again. Lately To's rom-coms are always a miss for me but this one has a detective procedural pulse which I always love. The last time Johnnie To did a detective genre film was Mad Detective and I totally adored it. The final scene of a guy experimentally placing his gun in different spots still sent a glee to my face. Last week we saw the trailer for Blind Detective and both my wife and I say almost in unison "must see". However there was one moment in the trailer that made us go WTF - Andy Lau driving blind, but more of that in a while. We love the movie but seriously we are quite biased towards procedurals. The detective portions here work like a charm. We are shown the smoking guns. Then doubts are cast to make us re-think everything. Everything is done right, nothing preposterous, everything is logical and never too much of a stretch. We love the scenes where we are shown the mind space of Johnston where he deconstructs the crime scene, complete with victims 'talking' to him. Brilliantly done. I didn't see Andy Lau in Switch which I heard is a terrible film but his acting here is excellent. I have seen Tony Leung act blind in Silent War and it's very interesting to see two different craft in action. Leung does it serious while Lau does it in a comedic manner. There are some cool stuff that Lau do that entrench his prowess in our consciousness... very clever work. The blind driving part also works remarkably well and never ridiculous because that is exactly how a blind person would drive, plus To uses the sequence to make them confess their feelings. There is also the rom-com angle which I feel To just managed to pull it off through the palatable chemistry between Lau and Cheng. Cheng as usual acts as the blur one (十三 点) which she always managed to pull off convincingly. Lau and Cheng's partnership is like Hank and Ryan's, a sure win. How Lau and Cheng play off each other is quite funny. I also love how the tone of the movie can switch from slapstick rom-com to all seriousness within a heartbeat. Over a dim sum supper, we pulled apart the movie (sometimes these sessions are more fun than the movie ). We didn't like Johnston's unrequited love arc which made the middle act sag. We took that arc out in our heads and it definitely firmed the movie up a lot. We had no doubt why this arc is in there - it features a China actress and it's tailor-in for the China market. All in all, a nice flick. I love watching movies that entertain and make my mind work. This one does that for us.