Excellent adaptation.

A different way of telling a story

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

There are plenty of entertaining action scenes in this movie, ranging from wire fu fighting to large scale CGI-monster fighting. These are imaginatively filmed and have some nice touches, even if here's nothing as good as the best action scenes from the previous Detective Dee movie, Phantom Flame.In between action, there is a very poorly told story.Actually, "story" is an exaggeration. It's more like a collection of incidents told in a particularly order. Everything just kind of happens. A ship battle results in disaster! A woman in a mask is in trouble! There's a merman! There are bandits! There's a new detective! There's a swimming horse! There are poison flowers! Everything is introduced by someone just saying, here is this thing that we need right now.There's a general rule in film that if the hero is going to pull out a gun in the final act, you want to establish that he owns a gun earlier on. That doesn't happen in this movie. Instead, there's a problem, and suddenly someone says, I know who can help, or, I've got the solution right here, or, the solution is at this place let's go right now.This is how a ten-year-old writes a story.No character development, little motivation, no real coherence. Dee's Sherlock Holmes deductions are generally unpersuasive.It's a dumb story, badly told, but the action scenes almost make up for that. Almost.

You have to have a soft spot for eastern movies and the fantasy world they are able to create. But then again, if you didn't why would you even bother watching or reading this, right? Maybe you are just curious because of the title. If that's the case, I'm not sure this is the best movie to start your "experience" with, but it is a very rock solid one and is entertaining.The "detective" aspect is like an added bonus to the fight scenes and the humor that drives the movie throughout. The effects are pretty decent and fight scenes are very well choreographed. You don't have to have seen the previous movie to enjoy this either. A nice little movie to have fun with then

Tsui Hark is back again with his latest fantasy-action-drama-adventure-thriller epic - Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon, which serves as a prequel to Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame released in 2010.The film tells how the young Dee rise to become a respectable detective for the Tang Dynasty, befriends the doctor Shaluo (similar to Sherlock Holmes and Watson) and his rival, Chief Commissioner/Detective Yuchi, unravels and solves an intriguing mystery case which involves a plot to assassinate the royal family and palace officials to overthrow the entire kingdom.In order to fully enjoy the film, it requires some suspension of disbelief from the audience for some of the fantasy or action elements shown in the film such as riding a horse underwater, 'Kraken' beast, parasites that can change a person's looks and behaviour entirely, flying around fighting in the air, etc.Although the wire-action choreography was great and well handled throughout the film, but the action scenes gets a little too much and it feels tedious to watch as the film moves on. It took away the focus of the mystery plot and a lot of potential character development required in the film. However, most of the lead and supporting actors did a fine job in portraying their character roles.The CGI has improved a lot and looked believable and realistic compared with past Chinese big budget films. Overall, it's still a watchable, entertaining Chinese big budget production comparable to Hollywood standards.

This is the first time i write a review at IMDb, please go easy on me, thanks! I was not expecting high on this movie because i was accompany my friend to watch it, what this movie got? High def quality in video & audio - checked! Good kungfu fighting scene - checked! Battle with sea monster(better than Pirate of the Caribbean) - checked! With these 3 factors, it already worth my money and time spent in the cinema! Acting is average among the casts, but Carina Lau definitely nailed it, WuZheTian is alive with her acting! The story is average, although it want to be like Sherlock Holmes, but the case they investigating didn't left much clue, just waiting the director to show us. Overall, it is the best Chinese WuXia film i watched in the recent years!