I had not even heard of this film when I bought it, the director Johnny To, neither despite his have a considerable output. I don't know about 'mad' but certainly crazy is a word that comes to mind. I was completely at sea for the first quarter of an hour or so and then in some difficulty for most of the remainder of the film. I still enjoyed it, however, and knew there was a key to unlocking the complete sense that I had every confidence was there. By the end I am grinning madly at the arranging and re-arranging of the bodies and the guns so that the final shoot out will make the right sort of 'sense' to the senior police. Basically our ex-cop, helping out with a new case is able to see people's inner personalities. This results in more than one person representing them on screen. There is also some confusion as to the whereabouts of the guy's wife who may or may not be there, or elsewhere, most of the time. I hope I haven't made this too easy to follow because having watched this open-mouthed and my brain struggling to make sense of the action, I recommend the same to anyone else.

"Mad Detective" starts promisingly. It shows that Johnny To has hit on a premise that allows his movie to not make sense without that perhaps being too much of a problem. However it falls apart towards the end and becomes just as maddeningly obtuse as all his other movies, the novel starting point hurting the movie in the final act.Bun is a detective with a supernatural gift - or is he just crazy? - that lets him see a person's "true personality". He is fired after he cuts off his own ear and tries to give it to his superior.Some time later, a policeman has gone missing and his gun has been used in murders. Bun is tracked down to find the culprit.Most of the above I had to check Wikipedia to find out. I remember the ear cutting bit, the fact that Bun has a "gift", and some of the other stuff. That's the thing with Johnnie To: details of crimes the characters are investigating and the motivations of the characters are always really sketchy, and the ending always requires you to understand stuff you don't.I think the problem with "Mad Detective" is its style. At first you feel liberated when you realise much of what you see on screen isn't supposed to be real and probably isn't supposed to make sense. You're seeing what the Mad Detective, Bun, sees. But in the end you realise you actually needed to be able to tell the difference between the real and the fake, and the movie doesn't give you enough help in this regard. There should have been a clear stylistic difference between the figments of Bun's imagination and those things that exist outside of his mind, or his second sight.What felt like an illuminating device only ended up adding more confusion than the usual To film.

Inspector Bun has a weird style of solving crimes and he has the ability to read inner personalities of people. Due to this behavior, he gets fired from the force. One day, Inspector Ho approaches Bun to help him in an ongoing case about a missing police officer. It's a movie that plays with your mind and force you to keep guessing throughout the movie. Ching Wan Lau plays the weird Bun character and brings all the emotions that the character demands. The concept of the movie was very simple and a thorough characterizations helps to an ending that is definitely worth the wait. Overall, it's a highly recommended for those who are looking for a serious crime thriller movie.

Johnnie To and Ka-Fai Wai have reinvented the detective genre and things will probably never be the same.Inspector Ho is stumped by the disappearance of a detective 18 months earlier.Desperate for a break he looks to Bun, a genius profiler with whom he briefly worked years before...when Bun went crazy and was thrown off the force. A funny, tense un-nerving cop drama where nothing is certain. Is Bun a genius or crazy? Has Ho lost his mind? Where will it all end? Its a trip. I'd tell you more but I'm still trying to process what I saw since things shift from our reality to Bun's, often so its not clear. Its a trip and then some. Actually I'd be very surprised if this film doesn't end up with a cult following, an American remake and lots of articles written about it. Its just a nifty little thriller.Definitely worth a viewing or two.