Boring

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

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

Slow and boring and long with the feel of a more vulgar version of CSI with Madsen wasting his time more playing a dirty cop who's involvement in Michael Rooker's death is apparently leaving him with sleepless nights or something, we just have flashback shots and Madsen in bed shots to really show for anything and he doesn't look too disturbed. Corey Large is awful as his new partner, a typical rookie role that's a twist that I don't mind revealing, he's the murderer. Yes, Madsen is on his typical "last case" cliché and it's a supposed serial killer of mob men or people involved in criminal enterprises and pictures left to taunt the detective and his staff. Hell they even have a funny autopsy/coroner whatever guy like CSI too. Gary Busey is wasted, he isn't even given a final fight scene or any dialogue besides a flashback scene that is inter-spliced into the movie at several points to be Madsen's nightmare. And even then the scene is not shown fully and so don't get a full clue on what happen til the final half of movie. And Busey is just not even given much of chance against Corey "doofus" Large who easily murders him. That's just lame. Busey is never one to go down without a fight regardless of the movie. And his death in this is rather stupid and anti-climatic. Danny Trejo gives a good performance as does veteran actor Tom Wright but they are lost in a sea of shitty other performances. Meat Loaf is there too as the superior to Madsen and is also barely in the movie. The end is bad and Large gets away with everything, why? I don't know. This movie is dumb and boring. And I have a feeling scenes are missing from it, like maybe nearly the whole ending is missing. Michael Rooker is also wasted in this movie. So many wasted good actors in this movie, it's a shame.

I watched this movie because I like several of the actors, including Madsen and Shannyn Sossamon. Shannyn is likable enough that I am willing to watch her in just about anything. Which is helpful, given the roles she generally gets.The mystery involves people turning up dead with Polaroid pictures left behind as clues. Kevin Harrison (Madsen) is the hardboiled, jaded detective who is retiring after this last case. Except that this case has connections to mistakes he has made in the past. There is a new cop working with him who behaves oddly, and the case also involves a link to Taylor's (Sossamon) missing father.The narrative was somewhat difficult to follow. It included flashbacks that seemed to contradict each other and motivations that the viewer had to guess at. Except that it doesn't really add up to a compelling enough story to make me want to watch it again. Some movies may seem complex on first viewing, but are rich enough to go back and examine until you get it. I won't be doing that with Chasing Ghosts. I think I'll re-watch L.A. Confidential instead.

When I first saw Shannyn Sossamon in 'The Holiday', I wanted to see what else she had done. Well, she was great in this otherwise forgettable effort.Perhaps it is just me, but after two viewings I have little idea of what was going on. We have this dirty cop about to retire and held over to finish out a baffling murder case. For unexplained reasons, he drives around in a 1969 Ford Galaxie convertible with a police radio. He is not undercover, so why does he drive his personal car? I suppose he was watching too many episodes of 'Miami Vice' and 'Nash Bridges' where the TV heroes drove their own convertibles.Then we have the trainee partner transferring in from undercover work in Miami. Somehow, he is immediately familiar with New York City and the local criminal hierarchy. His understanding of police procedure and office politics is strangely uneven. His personnel dossier is strangely incomplete, but little interest is aroused by these discrepancies. The police chief probably was thinking about having meatloaf for lunch.The plot has the dirty cop turning in his badge and sending a confession of his crime to the daughter of the undercover cop he murdered to save himself from exposure and death. Why our man is suddenly developing a conscience is never addressed.After more murders and an attempt to question an informant who suddenly and inexplicably turned homicidal toward his police handlers, we are allowed to find out that the real transferee cop from Miami has been held captive and a ringer is about to use his position to assassinate a crime lord in his prison cell.After killing his real target, the phony cop has no difficulty escaping from prison guards and a police dragnet and boarding a private jet to fly to freedom.The final photographs that would incriminate the dirty cop never reach the police and he presumably retires to enjoy his pension. The ending of this film is just as incoherent as the plot. It would not have strained the film budget much to provide a better script that would allow the audience to know what is supposed to be going on.

Madsen does Madsen like he always does, but here it fits the movie like a glove. The cinematography is outstanding; the Director of Photography deserves an Oscar nod for doing what he did on this budget. The music is spotty, one minute it is near greatness, the next minute it seems forced and mis-matched to the tension of the film. Still, the composer did an incredible job considering his budget. He did the whole thing on a Mac, with a MOTU Traveler using samples and a single recording session with strings only. The kind of atmosphere the director (Kyle Dean Jackson) was able to stir up with such a limited budget is remarkable.There isn't a poor performance in the bunch, save one: Corey Large. Large has all the passion of a rice cake. The guy simply cannot emote, which is sad because Shannyn Sossamon gives a tour de force performance opposite someone giving her nothing. I am very interested to see what this young director will do next, because he certainly does have what it takes to make a good movie. Frankly I tend to believe that the writer, producer and (uncredited) second director Alan Pao had a LOT to do with this film's excellence. Here's hoping that we'll see many more good things from both Jackson and Pao in the future.