狄仁杰之幽冥道 [Di Renjie zhi youming dao]

Back in the past-mid-point-10s i saw a new “Detective Dee” being released. I checked up on Wikipedia and saw that it’s a trilogy of movies. Reliable as always. When i remembered it a year or two later, i noticed that that movie i could watch is not a part of the trilogy, and isn’t even mentioned anywhere. I tried to do some research but instead of getting any info on that movie, i was only getting more Di Renjie movies and they don’t stop coming and they don’t stop coming and they don’t stop coming and they don’t stop coming… So, i compiled a list, and we are currently at ~60 titles and they don’t stop coming and they don’t stop coming and they don’t stop coming…But how did an ancient elderly wise bureaucrat transform into a rebel, a clown or a hunky boy, depending on the script? First, he was born into aristocracy. Then he worked as a judge during the Zhou “dynasty” under Wu Zetian. Around 1000 or less years later someone wrote some obscure novels about him. After the WW2 a nederland weeaboo discovered those and translated them into english. Seeing great success he then started to write fanfics and made a ton of that pulp. The comics followed. During the fall of red ion courtesan these books were noticed by professor Zhao so he wrote an essay (because he didn’t have YouTube in the 80s) that the great zhonghua culture conquered the world, and then translated them all into zhongwen. It exploded in popularity and being public domain anyone could (did) make an adaption. But once the means of movie production became easy to access, zhonghua streaming services started to bake tens of them per year.

This is my first Di Renjie film and i watched it on iq.com with their really bad english subtitles. Like, even robot translation wouldn’t be so bad. An amount of lines is missing. The timings make the lines disappear before you can read them. Daren (大人) is translated as “adult” instead of “sir”. Di Renjie is translated as “unique” a couple of times. But, well, this is the visual medium, so the visual storytelling, the context, and the most basic knowledge of some chinese, were enough to even enjoy the movie.

So this story is based on one of the fresh books, Shentan Di Renjie zhi yin bing jie lu, written by a prolific Di Renjie script-writer Panger Xuan. Di has drunk too much, so Wu Zetian sent him to jail. But once it was relayed to her that evil ghost soldiers prowl an (important?) road at night and turn everyone, including aristocracy into sand, she offered a pardon to Di if he can solve the mystery.

This take on Di Renjie is scooby sherlock busting myths. But, well, he is debunking them to the chinese folk standards of magick massages and spa procedures. And then when he proved that ghosts aren’t real, he had to fight against tesla-coil-bell zombies and magic flesh-eating worms. The story is not perfect, but the plot and storytelling are quite good, it was an intriguing watch.

It’s a modern zhonghua wuxia/xiaxia streaming film, so there’s an annoying “comedy” sidekick, undercranked slo-mo, and the general roughness. The action cinematography is okay-ish. It is not overcut to hide the fake fighting, it has a bit too many cuts to emulate holywood badness, and due to generally low camera and editing skills. Like, they are breaking 180 in many places and that makes you instantly understand why you shouldn’t break that rule. But nothing critical.

So when did the crazy wall cliche first appear? Because there are several in this movies about 700s CE. During the finale Hans Zimmer — Discombobulate starts playing, and somehow i doubt it was licensed. I’m almost sure there’s Pingan Li in the episodic role, but he is not in the credits.

If i had proper good subtitles and there were no pointless “comedy” sidekicks, i would enjoy this film significantly more. But even as is you can watch it for free on the streaming service iq.com if you are ready to keep your hand on the pause button. And it was still enjoyable.