That fight’s finished. Where’s the next one? I’m hoping it’s at the spirits shop.
Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon (2013) is the second, more or less, story of the early years of Detective Dee, a fictional Chinese detective working around 660 CE, who is in the Imperial City Luoyang, changing governmental jobs, and stumbles across clues as to the sinking of the fleet. Starting out with the disapproval of Yuchi, a member of the Judicial branch who has been charged with discovering the nature of whatever sank the fleet, Dee stops competitive kidnappings, wins Yuchi’s approval, and generally does amazing things for the Chinese Imperial family.
And it is fun, even if it’s difficult to become familiar with any of the characters as they seem to be a mixture of cliches; perhaps it’s more accurate to suggest their motivations are opaque, although they might be collectively labeled Don’t piss of the Empress. Add in captions, Chinese tropes and legends of which Westerners generally know little, and a certain frenetic brittleness, and this big movie becomes a mouthful that is distracting rather than involving action.
The visuals are gorgeous and the climactic battle is quite fun. I shan’t recommend it for the foregoing reasons, but I didn’t regret watching it.
