This film is certainly the opposite of the usual detective film. Instead of the detective catching the bad guys as a result of being logical, analytical, and clever, the lead character in this film solves crimes by psychic and irrational means. That in itself is a fascinating premise, and if this film had not gone so over the top in places, and had been more subtle, it could have been a very profound film which explored all sorts of interesting implications for the detection of crime. However, the psychic cop is just too bonkers, and extremely annoying. The intention seems to have been to portray him as disturbingly autistic, and to go for some laughs as well. I absolutely hated the Swedish TV series THE BRIDGE (2011) because the lead detective was a woman who was so extremely autistic that the series was intensely annoying and watching it became pointless. This film suffers from the same syndrome, though to a lesser extent. I also think of A BEAUTIFUL MIND (2001) in which a genius is portrayed as an annoying autistic person. Why is it that today so many movies can only portray people who are more intelligent than others by grovelling with apology to the audience for daring to show the mental superiority of character by saying: 'but don't worry, everyone, they are really crazy, and their genius is a pathological aberration, so you don't need to feel inferior.' We certainly do live in an age which could well be called The Triumph of the Lowest Common Denominator. (I say that despite the fact that, education having long since collapsed, there are probably few people left alive apart from professional mathematicians who even know what a denominator is.) In a moronic age, the only genius which is permissible is truly that which is apologetically portrayed as being outrageously insane. Then we can all feel better, can't we? Relaxing in a hot bath of ignorance can be blissful, as we drift into decline as a civilization.
Review of Mad Detective
