Cross-Country Crime

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"Detective Chinatown 3"

Then again, how many films released recently feature references to John Dickson Carr and the Locked Room Lecture...?

After their involvement in various Chinatown-related murders in Bangkok and New York, the brilliant mystery fanatic Qin Feng and his troublemaker uncle Tang Ren find themselves summoned to Tokyo by Noda, a fellow detective whom they first met in New York and like Qin Feng, among the top-ranking detectives on the app Crimaster, where real-life detectives compete. Noda, Qin Feng and Tang Ren are hired by Watanabe, the boss of the yakuza organization Black Dragon Group and the sole suspect in a murder case. The Black Dragon Group and the South-East Asian Company (a Thai mafia group) had been conducting business regarding the development rights for New Chinatown and the final meeting between the two bosses Watanabe and Su Chaiwit was held in a pavilion located in the middle of a lake, with only one bridge as entrance. Members of both gangs were posted outside the single entrance of the pavilion itself while Watanabe and Su Chaiwit conducted their business inside. After a while though, the two gangs outside first hear a loud crash, followed some time later by a cry and when they break the doors of the pavilion open, they find Su Chaiwit stabbed in his stomach and Watanabe lying on the ground holding a glass shard from the glass dividing screen which had been toppled over. Su Chaiwit is rushed to the hospital, but it's too late for him, and Watanabe is arrested for the murder on his rival, despite his denial of the crime. Watanabe's trial is in a week, and he offers Noda, Qin Fen and Tang Ren a fortune to help prove his innocence. His claim is that their tea was drugged and that he lost consciousness and that he only woke up after everyone had broken into the pavilion and Su Chaiwit was already murdered, but this seems impossible: all the entrances to the pavilion and the bridge were observed by either cameras or the gang members and there was nobody else inside the pavilion. Qin Feng finds this locked room murder mystery very interesting, but the presence of the rival Thai detective "Rabbid Dog" Jaa and a nosy Tokyo police detective don't make the investigation easy in the 2021 film Tang Ren Jie Tan An 3, better known as Detective Chinatown 3.

The first Detective Chinatown was a pleasant surprise when I first saw it a few years back, presenting a funny action-comedy film that actually had a satisfying locked room mystery. The second one I didn't like at all though, and I didn't even bother with writing a review. So the third one could go both ways. Would it be a surprisingly solid mystery film like the first, or would it be a disappoint like the second? Detective Chinatown 3 was given a major release in Japan recently (not strange considering the Japan setting and the many Japanese actors who star in the film) and reception was pretty positive, also regarding the mystery aspect, so I decided to take a look at this one too.

The elaborate action sequence that opens the film sets the mood immediately, making sure you won't mistake this zany film for a "serious" mystery film, but despite that, the investigation into the locked room murder is definitely the core of this film and overall, it's fairly entertaining. After the chaotic opening scene, we are quickly introduced to the relatively simple locked room situation: the victim and the suspect were the only persons actually inside the the pavilion in the middle of a small lake, while there were security cameras and members from both gangs stationed immediately outside the pavilion, meaning nobody could have gone in or outside without being noticed. Some flashy deduction scenes here quickly inform the viewer that they are probably not always given the opportunity to think about all the clues for themselves as things move pretty swiftly, but it's entertaining to see and the movie is indeed presenting a genuine locked room mystery. Having both Qin Feng and Noda present makes for some nice dynamics: in the first film, Qin Feng was obviously the brilliant fan of detective fiction, while his uncle Tang Ren functioned as the troublemaker charged with the physical action/comedy, but in this film, we also have Noda function as a rival detective/friend for Qin Feng and they use each other as sounding boards like Conan and Hattori in Detective Conan. By the way, did Noda's actor Tsumabuki Satoshi study Chinese for his starring role this time, because I don't remember him speaking this much Chinese in the second film (where he admitttedly had a smaller role)?

It's a shame that Detective Chinatown 3 changes in a completely different film halfway though. A witness who may hold vital information necessary to solve the locked room murder disappears at one point and then the film suddenly becomes Lethal Weapon 3. I think it's trying to set-up/tie in with sequels/spin-offs as we're introduced to a secondary plotline that involves more of the detectives active on the detective app Crimaster as seen in the second film, but it feels like it's a completely different film, about a completely different case. The implementation of this mid-section is incredibly clumsy and while it can be quite amusing at times (the cosplay event!) and also features a few scenes that look really great, it just feels out of place, as it's nothing at all like the story segments that precede or follow it. The whole mid-section could've been cut out of the film and you'd still have a completely coherent story. Actually, the story would be more coherent without the mid-section. A major part of this secondary plotline relies on your knowledge of the previous films and if you aren't familiar with them, a lot of terms and names will just ring no bells, leaving you with a mid-section that doesn't seem to go anywhere. Perhaps this part will feel more important when the pay-off comes in subsequent films, but for now, it's just a different story they forcefully added to another.

But back to the main mystery. While considering all the plausible scenarios that could explain the locked room murder, Qin Feng even quotes his beloved John Dickson Carr and he even compares the situation they are facing with the Locked Room Lecture, hoping to find a category that fits their problem (this visual sequence here is pretty awesome!) But when at the conclusion, Qin Feng declares that this is a completely new type of locked room not covered by Carr... let's say he's exaggerating a bit. A bit a lot. Had this been a Detective Conan episode, this locked room murder would just have been an average twenty-minute anime original episode, as the solution is neither surprising nor original. Perhaps if you're not used to mystery fiction, but then again, then quoting John Dickson Carr wouldn't mean anything to you in the first place, so it's as if were trying to sell off a simple locked room murder to both people not particlarly interested in detective fiction, as well as to die-hard fans. It's a functional mental problem, and while the locked room situation of the first film still remains the best of the series, it is worked out in a competent manner in terms of clewing. 

Overall, the film is entertaing to watch though. It has a distinct, slapstick comic-like vibe to it, which some may like and some may not, but I quite like the over-the-top characters and the silly action scenes that are interspersed throughout the story (which is perhaps partially why I didn't like the second film, which tried to be too serious at times). There's a funny slapstick scene in the morgue early in the film for example, while the various detectives running into each other never seems to feel boring. 

Detective Chinatown 3 is by no means a perfect murder mystery film. It has a simple, but passable locked room murder mystery that is presented in a flashy and visually engrossing manner, but the story is interrupted halfway with a completely different story and depending on how invested you are in the Detective Chinatown mythos, this part might feel completely out of place. The comic-like vibe is one I like though, and while the mystery plot is quite simple, I found the overall film amusing to watch, even if not all the parts made as much sense as others. If you're just looking for two hours of mystery-related entertainment (with lots of comedy/action), you could do much worse than this. If you have already seen the previous Detective Chinatowns and liked them, I'd definitely recommend watching this. 

Original Chinese title(s): "唐人街探案3"

The Din And Bustle

"Spoilers! Goodbye, sweetie."

Doctor Who

One of the weirdly specific memories I have of my brief visit to Yokohama's Chinatown (the largest Chinatown in Japan) was how the waiters in the restaurants there were... not as polite as the ones you usually see in restaurants in Japan. They were not actually rude, mind you, but the way they placed the dishes we ordered on the table definitely made more noise than you'd normally expect in a restaurant in Japan!

After being rejected for the police academy, Qin Feng is told by his grandmother to go to Bangkok for a week of soothing the spirit. His uncle Tang Ren is supposed to be the greatest detective in Bangkok's Chinatown, which interests young Qin Feng, who is a big fan of mystery fiction. After arriving in Bangkok though, he learns his uncle is in fact basically just an underling of the local police sergeant, doing odd jobs or finding lost pets. The Bangkok Police Force is busy working on the murder on Sompat. Sompat was a member of a gang that managed to make off with a stash of gold of a powerful gangster called Mr. Yan, with Sampat being the one watching the loot, but when the police entered Sompat's workshop after a long stake-out, they discover Sompat was murdered, and the gold gone from the workshop. Surveillance camera footage of the single entrance to the building show that the only person to enter and leave the shop around the time of the murder was in fact Tang Ren, making him the prime suspect for the Sompat murder, as well as gold theft. While fleeing for the Bangkok Police Force, the original thieves of the gold and Mr. Yan's men, Qin Feng and Tang Ren try to figure out who the true murderer and thief is, and how they managed to enter and leave the workshop without being seen in the Chinese 2015 comedy-mystery film Tang Ren Jie Tan An, which also carries the official English title of Detective Chinatown.

Detective Chinatown was mentioned by a commentator of the blog a while back as a film that had more classic mystery influences than originally expected, and the summary told me it was (basically) a locked room murder, so I decided to give a try and it turned out to be a truly pleasant surprise, as it was definitely a competent mystery film.

I said it was basically a locked room murder mystery, because as you may have noticed from my summary, it technically isn't: Police investigation shows there was only one entrance to the crime scene, and footage from four (!) seperate security cameras show nobody entered or left the crime scene before or after the murder save for Tang Ren. So obviously, the whole problem only becomes an impossible situation only if you accept that Tang Ren is innocent and that thus the real murderer must have escaped the crime scene without being seen. The "It's only a locked room mystery if you accept that one character must be innocent" premise is something not uncommon in mystery stories (Carr's The Judas Window for example), but I do always hesitate about calling it a locked room mystery, as it completely shuts out the most obvious solution ("That one character *is* guilty"), often without any real (logical) reason.

Anyway, the locked room mystery is technically the main puzzle of the story, though it sometimes get pushed to the background between all the misadventures of Qin Feng and Tang Ren. That said though, it's actually a nicely plotted mystery. The trick behind the impossible disapperance of the true murderer is admittedly not very complex, yet effective and it is very competently clued, so an attentive viewer could've connected the dots themselves to come up with the solution. I've seen more elaborate variations of the same trick before, but it worked well here (especially as it's usually harder to do really complex locked room mysteries in the video format). The identity of the murderer themselves is a bit disappointing though, as Qin Feng and Tang Ren were pretty lucky to get on their trail in the first place.

Detective Chinatown is also a comedy(-action) film by the way, so Qin Feng and Tang Ren's efforts to find the murderer are often interrupted by their run-ins with any of the parties after them, often resulting in chaotic chases around Bangkok's Chinatown. It's a lot of physical comedy (think early Jackie Chan films) and in terms of atmosphere, the film kinda reminded me of Higashigawa Tokuya's work, even if in Detective Chinatown, the comedy is not intricitly connected to the actual mystery.

Qin Feng is presented as a big fan of mystery fiction, from the classics like Ellery Queen to modern writers like Higashino Keigo. We see this in his characterization, as he sometimes makes references to famous mystery stories. Which is good, until the moment here he spoils several novels!  No real mystery fan would simply spoil the main tricks of mystery novels like that! The most prominent ones he outright spoils are Aosaki Yuugo's Taiikukan no Satsujin and Utano Shougo's short story Kyuudousha no Misshitsu (collected in Misshitsu Satsujin Game), so beware if you have not read these stories. It's interesting though he references Japanese mystery novels (and relatively recent ones too!) in a Chinese film though, as it'd mean that Japanese mystery novels are fairly well known among the target public. I mean, can you see an American mystery film suddenly making a reference to a Japanese mystery novel?

So in short, Detective Chinatown turned out to be an entertaining mystery film, with a fairly satisfying locked room murder in a setting I had never seen before (Bangkok's Chinatown). My main issue with the film, besides the spoilers, would be that the film is just too long for the plot. The chase scenes and all are really nothing but padding, stretching a plot that could've worked perfectly in ninety minutes, into something longer than two hours, and while they're entertaining, one or two of those scenes could've easily been cut out to streamline the thing a bit. But all in all, I'd say any puzzle-plot mystery fan will find something to their liking with this movie.

Original Chinese title(s): "唐人街探案"