I stumbled over the film Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame by accident, as I was looking up an adaptation of Robert Van Gulik’s The Haunted Monastery. The film seemed okay, but the trailer rather turned me off. It didn’t seem like my kind of movie. Well, I was wrong… but I was also right. This movie is a strange mixture of stuff I really like and stuff I don’t care for at all.The idea for a plot is a really darn good one. As Wu Zetian prepares to be declared Empress, a series of spontaneous combustions occur that threaten to ruin the coronation. Detective Dee is released from prison, where he was thrown 8 years before for treason, and he is ordered to track down the criminal and serve justice.
