THE production design of The Bullet Vanishes is gorgeous, the actors are commendable, with a little bit of eye candy thrown in, but, unfortunately, the storyline is tedious and has been rehashed a million times.
Detective stories are nothing new and viewers would have seen two Sherlock Holmes movies and thousands of episodes of CSI over the past few years. Even the Russian roulette idea comes from The Deer Hunter.
Also, the pairing of an elderly, more experienced detective with a young handsome hotshot is blasé.
The movie's social critique, about the working class being under the thumb of a tyrannical rich guy, while praiseworthy, is also nothing new.
Two detectives, Song (Lau Ching Wan) and Guo (Nicholas Tse), probe a series of mysterious shooting deaths in a bullet factory in Shanghai in the 1930s. The workers blame this on the ghost of a young female worker wrongly accused of stealing and then killed while being forced to play Russian roulette.
The explanation is too complicated too reveal, but viewers get to visit a morgue headed by a pretty doctor and listen to vague theories on bone and ice bullets.
What about the eye candy, you ask. That comes in the form of China's Yang Mi, 25, who plays Guo's informant girlfriend called Little Lark. Viewers, be prepared for her languorous figure and stunning beauty.
As I said earlier, the sets and lighting are excellent, and credit goes to production designer Silver Cheung. The Silent War, starring Tony Leung and set in post-war China, also boasts terrific production sets and lighting.
As the movie winds down, viewers get to view a Russian roulette face off between the two detectives. I don't know the reason for director Lo Chi-leung using this method for both of them to extract the truth from each other, but it's uncalled for and contrived.
Finally, the flick is about good people doing bad things. Does this include the filmmaker and producers of The Bullet Vanishes?
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