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In order to find out the suspect and reveal the conspiracy that held against Wu Zietan, the first empress of China, as her opponents do their best, in order to prevent her from taking the throne, as they begin a killing series, the thing that leads her to set free the old investigator Dee, in order to investigate on that case.
9 July 1976, Xiantao, Hubei, China
8 December 1964, Suzhou, China
27 February 1973, Harbin, China
2 March 1945
1 February 1958, Hong Kong
27 September 1961, Tai Po, Hong Kong
17 December 1939, Guangdong, China
18 December 1963, Beijing, China
20 May 1975, Changchun, Jilin, China
8 February 1979, Jiangxi, China
5 July 1987, Anhui Province, China
October 10, 2015
If you're looking for a popcorn movie, producer-director Tsui has crafted an absurdist fantasy that might cure -- or spontaneously combust -- the summertime blues. But even escapist entertainment can have interesting angles.September 23, 2011
Detective Dee is the action flick of the year, a two-hour epic that blows the Pirates of the Caribbean to the Bermuda Triangle.September 23, 2011
"Dee" doesn't shoot for the gravitas of Zhang Yimou's "Hero." It doesn't approach that film's magnificent sensory impact, either, or the artistic romanticism that made "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" such a success here.September 29, 2011
It is a peculiar conflation of history -- there really was an Empress Wu -- and pure cinematic fantasy.September 22, 2011
Three decades into his career, Tsui Hark stands as one of the movies' great entertainers, displaying a dancer's sense of rhythm and movement and manipulating physical space with an abandon worthy of Chuck Jones.October 20, 2011
There is nothing wrong with its reach, but its grasp of genre elements is random.October 13, 2011
In their best moments, Hark's action movies have a what-did-I-just-see giddiness, as if their choreography were springing straight from a cartoon id.November 17, 2011
The game's afoot, and the foot knows kung fu.October 07, 2015
What's tragic about "Detective Dee" is the fact that it rapes a chapter of Chinese history beyond any semblance of reality.October 09, 2011
The film's visual style is at times so dense it simply overwhelms (ditto the plot).September 26, 2011
By the end, with the running time pushing past the two-hour mark, it's reasonable to ask: Just who are these people?September 22, 2011
A colourful carnival of relentless action and artful images.