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Johnston (Andy Lau) uses his remaining senses to solve a cold case and find the deranged serial killer in Hong Kong filmmaker Johnnie To's latest, Blind Detective

Ho is forced to play dress-up and try and relive the experience of a missing woman in Johnnie To's misguided genre-blender Blind Detective

Tingting (Gao Yuanyuan), the love of Johnston's life, takes him for a spin on the dance floor. Alas, Sammi Cheng is the female lead. Guess who gets the boy?

A rare if overdue Johnnie To misfire reunites Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng in a genre mashup. Elizabeth Kerr reports.

There's something comforting about a fluffy summer rom-com. Regardless of where you fall on the sliding scale of loving them or loathing them, they're the opposite of what floods theaters during this time of year and can be a refreshing change - particularly for the target female audience. This despite the fact that plenty of women like a good dust-up and fast cars, but gender -based marketing is another essay for another time. In that vein comes Blind Detective, the latest from the Johnnie To factory, starring two of his favorite actors and written by his stable of preferred screen scribes.

After seven (!) outings together, Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng can confidently claim the title Hong Kong's own of 21st century version of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, of Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal. They may have a way to go to match Hepburn and Tracy's legendary status, but they do have modernity on their side. And as shrill as Cheng can be at times, she doesn't come close to donning Ryan's affected cuteness. As a trio, To, Lau and Cheng have had their strong moments (Needing You), admirable if questionable missteps (Yesterday Once More) and utter, albeit popular, dreck (Love on a Diet) - which is to be expected when you keep going to the same well time and again. Blind Detective falls somewhere in the middle of the pack, if it can be lumped in with To's earlier rom-coms at all.

It is impossible to make this long story short. Johnston (in the subtitles and Chong when spoken, played by Lau) is a retired cop who has spun an injury that left him blind into a lucrative bounty business, wrapping up cold cases with his newfound quasi-supernatural powers. He has found a way to use his remaining senses and insert himself into the crime scenes, thus reliving the events and solving the crime. Ho (Cheng) is an underappreciated cop who acts mostly as a waitress for other cops who thinks Johnston has some kind of special deductive skill that he could teach and help her with her career.

He agrees primarily because Ho tells him the story of how she abandoned a friend in need one night and wants his help with closure. This arrangement sets off a series of ridiculous and super-stylized "re-enactments" of cold crimes: a series of missing and/or murdered young women (of course) that may have something to do with Ho's missing friend, a casino heist (maybe) and a morgue murder as just a few. Johnston has Ho go all method as they investigate, and as they get to know each other - wait for it - they develop feelings for each other.

Also in this convoluted mix is Johnston's old partner, Fatbo (Guo Tao), the beautiful dance instructor (Gao Yuanyuan) from Johnston's past, a chef working in Macao and a penchant for the lovesick to travel around in wardrobes. Don't ask. None of this, mind, has anything to do with how the mystery plays out.

One of To's strengths has always been his ability to make the city part of the story, and he does that again for the most part here. Blind Detective is intensely "Hong Kong" and it's nice to see a filmmaker who totally understands the form exploit it in a way that brings it to life in all its humid, cramped, neon glory. The opening sequence in Mongkok is vivid. But the same charms that worked in any of To's great crime thrillers (PTU, The Mission and Motorway spring to mind) lend themselves to silly blind person slapstick comedy and suck the air out of the film. Lau may be a great movie star, but this time around To may have been wise to choose one of his heavier hitters, like Anthony Wong or even Louis Koo, who has a knack for physical comedy. Cheng does her best with a thin role that reduces her to being smacked a bit too much for good taste, and both resort to sheer volume in their performances a bit too often.

But the flaws in the film are all rooted in an overstuffed script, unusual for the team led by Wai Ka-fai and Yau Nai-hoi, both of whom have proved they indeed have sharp storytelling skills in films such as Running on Karma, Election and many of To's best. Wai and Yau, along with Ryker Chan and Yu Xi (who collectively wrote Drug War) drop the ball this time around. It's almost as if each wrote one section of the film: Wai did the rom-com, Yau worked on the morgue sequence, Chan focused on the serial killer and so on, and the result is an ungainly mash-up of genre and tone. The film's final act is incongruously violent and grim, coming close to removing the rom-com element film altogether. Plot points that lead nowhere - a jogging thief, Johnston's old flame, a crooked gambler (even if the gambler is the always welcome Lam Suet) - could easily have been jettisoned for a more streamlined narrative. There is any number of entry points for the duo's blossoming romance, and random threads that "help" its forward momentum are simply gratuitous. It's not like To to be bloated; the brilliant The Mission clocked in at 85 minutes!

So with judicious editing Blind Detective could have been a passable, if not memorable, entry into the To/Lau/Cheng canon, but as it stands it's destined for status as a garbled misfire. But even with its flaws and all the screaming, Lau and Cheng very nearly rise above the material and prove that even with a less than sparkling script, they are a romantic duo for the ages.

Blind Detective opened in Hong Kong on Thursday.

(HK Edition 07/05/2013 page7)