This isn’t the first time I’ve praised the work of Ed Brubaker.  He may be the finest comics writer working in the mainstream, as his Bourne style take on cheesy Marvel stalwart Captain America has brilliantly proven.  And the fourth volume of his creator-owned series Criminal is just out, a collaboration with superb British artist Sean Phillips.

Titled Bad Night, and under a lurid pulp style cover of a woman pulling a sheet up to cover herself while holding a gun, it’s a dark noir tale where noone comes out of what happens smelling of roses.  The protagonist is a cartoonist called Jacob Kurtz who draws the Frank Kafka P.I. strip for the local paper, a gig he picked up after recovering from the traumas associated with losing his wife in a crash that many thought he was responsible for.  He caricatures one of the town cops in the strip, which has shown up in Criminal previously, and that hubris is ultimately responsible for his downfall.

Jacob’s nemesis is that cop, who’s tired of being called Officer Wrong as per his cartoon lookalike, and sees himself as relatively decent by local standards.  Which doesn’t stop him hatching a plan to get a slice of some triad money that involves making use of Jacob’s skills as a forger and killing a triad member while he’s in the cells.  Most fatally though, he sets it up for Jacob to fall for a twisted woman, the one on the front cover, a messed-up nurse turned stripper: Iris.

So far, you could be forgiven for thinking you’ve seen it all before.  Bad cops, crazy women, and intrigue.  Which is kind of the point: Criminal is Brubaker’s vehicle for telling classic crime stories, and this is a particularly noir one.  Like noir, and you’ll love this.  Simple as.  What makes it different is that it’s told in the form of a comic where there’s subtle continuity of characters and place between the different storylines, and the stark and moody artwork that Sean Phillips provides, with note-perfect colours by Val Staples.

The other difference is unique to this particular storyline, and that’s the use of a device that’s very much a comicbook one to get insight into the mind of Jacob Kurtz: now and then his creation Frank Kafka P.I. is present in the panels, drawn and lettered as Jacob illustrates him in his newspaper strip.  It’s an effective device that becomes even more powerful when we realise how mentally damaged Jacob is, and probably the only example in the history of Criminal of a technique that couldn’t be used in the pages of a dimestore novel.

It’s maybe because of the tight focus of the story on a small group of characters that I rate this over other Criminal collections.  They’re all good, and one day when I read them all I’m sure I can look forward to understanding more of the connections between them.  But this one in particular is exquisitely executed, an example of what happens when a writer is in command of his material before he writes the first part.  The last chapter, which explores what’s happening from other perspectives, proves that brilliantly.

I was only once pulled out of immersion in the story, by what could be an in-joke, when a brutish character makes a reference to Fellini.  It’s not just the fact that Fellini is mentioned: it could have been any real world reference.  But it momentarily serves to burst the bubble that Brubaker and Phillips have so cleverly created.  That’s one reference out of however many pages: in every other respect the story and characters pull you into the world of its creators.  And that’s one of the highest compliments you can pay to people involved in any form of creativity.

So, I’ve got me a book to write.  Went up to Manchester yesterday to meet my client, and spent the afternoon in a tapas restaurant favoured by Man City players talking through his history, and our future plans.  All being well — and all is looking remarkably well — we’re about to embark on a project that will not only involve a book, but a number of  spinoffs too.  Colour me excited.

I came away from the meeting with a healthy cheque from one of those Scottish banks that issues its own currency.  That’ll cover writing the outline and first three chapters, and by the time they’re written (quite soon, there are valid time constraints involved in this process), we’ll have a good idea of exactly what happens next, and what our publishing strategy is.

If all of this sounds unusual for those who operate in the world of books, that’s because the man commissioning the text is himself an unusual character.  He’s a high achiever in his domain, and the book will cover his history and achievements to some extent — but neither of us are interested in producing a lickspittle biography.  No, this is about raising awareness of issues that are important to him, and raising money to do something about them: proceeds from book sales will be going to charity.

It’s a fascinating project, and one I am highly motivated by.  Here, the challenge is to bring together different aspects of my writing skills in the service of a book (and, in times, its spin-offs).  The book will be a biography of sorts, which will of course utilise my capabilities as a researcher and interviewer.  But it’s one that is designed to inspire and motivate with a call to action at its heart.  And that calls for a particular approach, for which I’ll be drawing on The Hero’s Journey as a template, my experience as a copywriter, and the subtle but powerful language skills I recently studied with NLP trainer Gabriel Guerrero.  Plus, at the end of every chapter there’ll be exercises for the reader to engage with based on the content of what they’ve just read, which taps into my abilities as a trainer.  All of which justifies me asking for, and receiving, a more than decent fee for my services.

If all goes to plan, I’ll be finishing this book by the autumn, at which point I’ll be ready to start on another one.  That’s a project which overlaps with this one in some regards, again commissioned by a high achiever — a former world champion in his sport — with something he wants to get across to people.  But in other respects it’ll be a very different book, if only because he’s a very different sort of man in terms of background, outlook, and the way he wants to make a difference.

Both these commissions have taught me something about the nature of networking, too.  It validates the approach I’ve taken on that front, which is to introduce myself to people who seem interesting, and see what develops.  Simple as that.  No particular agenda: just follow where attention takes you, get engrossed with the other person, and discover if there are opportunities for you to assist one another.  In these cases, the projects have appeared through one person paying attention to my postings on an online forum and thinking I was saying things that made sense, and offering to look over some written work from the perspective of a professional writer.  Nothing formal, no money changing hands, just being noticeable, consistent, and helpful.

All very well.  Now what I’ve got to do is start on the first book, beginning with structuring it.  I know what the ordinary world and inciting incident are, have a good idea of who the mentor is…now to set off in pursuit of the elixir and bring it back to share…

In other news, I’ve succumbed to Twitter, or at any rate want to find out what all the fuss is.  Find me there at www.twitter.com/youdothatvoodoo

It was the superb Michael Clayton that made me aware of the talents of writer-director Tony Gilroy.  My estimation for him went up even more when I found out he was a key writer on the Bourne films.  Smart, kinetic, and engaging, his work is sleek and intelligent with an ability to connect with large audiences in a way that David Mamet’s sadly fails to.  Which is a shame, as Mamet and Gilroy share some stylistic tendencies and, perhaps, sensibilities.  Anyway, all of this is a way of saying that I was very interested in checking out Gilroy’s latest, Duplicity.

Like Michael Clayton, the new film is an exploration of human values set against a backdrop of corporate intrigue.  Like Michael Clayton, it stars a male hunk in the form of Clive Owen, here performing alongside Julia Roberts.  Like Michael Clayton, the narrative is non-linear, telling its story over the course of several years through numerous flashbacks.  Unlike Michael Clayton, reviews have been decidedly patchy, which made me even more curious to see for myself what was going on.

Clive and Julia are both in the espionage game, with the emphasis on the word ‘game’.  They’re smooth operators who have a thing for each other, and hit on the idea of retiring young on the money they can make by hiring their services out to the corporate sector.  So far, simple enough.  But there are layers — and layers upon layers — within that concept as it unfolds, making Duplicity like origami say, or filo pastry: something you know is tough to create, and that most people are too sensible to attempt for themselves.  And, as with folded paper and baklava, a little goes a long way.

It’s undeniably clever stuff, but what’s at stake is too interior for the audience to be massively concerned.  When Julia Roberts is being Erin Brockovich, we get involved with her quest for justice, her path to empowerment, and so forth.  Here, she may or may not love Clive Owen and may or may not be pulling the wool over his eyes, and the same goes for him with regard to her.  Meh.

There’s certainly rich material here, but it’s pretty esoteric and self-involved compared to the payoff in Michael Clayton, which was a clear vindication for the George Clooney character and a condemnation of Tilda Swinton’s.  There’s no equivalent catharsis in Duplicity, which is a shame when — rightly or wrongly — the audience are expecting some kind of romantic shenanigans, albeit filtered through a corporate style Mr & Mrs Smith scenario.

Ultimately, it’s that failure to engage with audience expectations that is Duplicity’s downfall.  And I say that with resentment, since it validates Brit screen guru Phil Parker’s claim that understanding genre is important to creating successful cinema.  Here, a contract is established with the audience that is undermined by a filmmaker intent on creating a film that subverts such a relationship.  Which is kind of fine at an intellectual level, but ultimately fails to satisfy, and the confused and unhappy response of the majority of the audience leaving the cinema made it clear that Duplicity had failed to connect with them.

Most of the 18-25 year olds I come across fail to understand that it’s not the mobile phone that they’re having problems with, but the person at the other end of it, and that chucking it across the room is not going to similarly propel their antagonist away.   And, in the main, films are designed to be viewed by 18-25 year olds.  Especially films with big name actors that have to sell a lot of tickets to make any money.  And I just don’t see that many 18-25 year olds being interested in a story with the tricksiness of Duplicity, the very title of which indicates that you’re in for some kind of shell game, where your understanding is the pea that’s being shifted around under the shells.

Just as an experiment — I’ve got plenty of actual writing projects to be getting on with — I decided to experiment with coming up with another one.  The criteria?  That it had to combine a person or people I’ve seen with a story in the news.

The people part of it came easily, when I came across a bunch of bikers congregating at a drive-in McDonalds.  They were all in their fifties, and seemed to be an interesting hybrid: they were older bikers with expensive machines, yes, but they seemed more serious than the weekend road warriors I’ve come across who normally fit that category.  That impression came from their clothes: bulky leathers, some of them fringed in the manner of buckskin jackets, rather than Belstaffs.  They wore a variety of badges indicating solidarity with other fixtures of the bike scene, whether rallies, festivals, or particular cafes.  And they all seemed to be sporting t-shirts declaring that they were Lone Riders.

As a group, the bikers fascinated me.  Where were they headed, and what were their individual stories?  Unlike many middle-aged premium bike owners, this bunch still had a hairy demeanour: friendly enough, but with an air of having ridden as a pack for some decades.  Which in turn got me thinking about the distinctions between people who keep up a youthful pursuit, and those who abandon it.  In this specific case I was reminded of an anecdote from a friend who did some VJing at a Hells Angel clubhouse.  There were various photos up of members from across the years, but some photos had a figure blanked out.  Enquiring as politely as he could why this might be the case, he was informed regarding the absent figure, ‘He didn’t want to be the best any more’.

So, it all starts to come together: a group who consider themselves elite, still gathering thirty years after they started to ride together.  That sense of being apart from others is implicit in the name Lone Riders, as well as containing an obvious paradox: if they are lone, how come there are so many of them, and that they seek out each other for company?  That dynamic provides rich material for developing the individual characters within the group, especially with the other experiences of hanging out with bikers I’ve had over the years, from the guy in Coventry who cooked his breakfast in a hubcap to Soldier Blue, an ex-military biker group I encountered at a pagan festival, who maintained the hierarchy in civilian life that had given them identity in the army.

All I needed now was the news item to involve the bikers in, and the one that seemed to fit was this story in The Observer about a man given £46 after spending 27 years in prison for a crime he hadn’t committed.  Turn the imprisoned man into an associate of the bikers, an idiot savant about bikes, and you’ve got a reason for them to be rallying on his behalf.  They can be acting to get him out of prison, and their success in doing so is followed by the failure of the system to do anything realistic with him.

A bit more thought, and the story takes further shape to fit in with existing ingredients.  If the guy has been in prison for all this time, and now needs the support of the bikers, it can become a tale about the past coming back to haunt you.  All this time they’ve been campaigning for his release, and now they’ve achieved it…what?  Is this what’s held them together all this time?  Getting together every weekend is one thing, helping someone with limited faculties adapt to a new life after being institutionalised for decades is another, and could provoke tensions within the group.

All of which adds up to a feasible story: the success of a campaign to release a man wrongfully arrested leads to the collapse of the group who did the campaigning, as the reality of his condition creates conflict within the group supporting him.  Sounds like a tv drama to me, and one I’d be inclined to watch…and all inspired by the overlap of some people I’d seen and a newspaper headline.

It’d be interesting to know if Free Agents was always headed towards the deeper waters it ended up in with the series finale, or if that was a surprise to writer Chris Niel.  I’m betting that he always knew that there was richer emotional territory to explore with his two leads, Sharon Horgan and Stephen Mangan, but surprised himself when he got there.  Maybe, maybe not.

At any rate, this has been a flawed but nonetheless engaging series.  What you’ve got is two characters who have become more three dimensional as time has gone on, playing against a backdrop of amusing caricatures.  Helen and Alex work together, and have slept together a couple of times, which what with her mourning her fiance’s death and him just becoming a single dad has confused their relationship.  He’s hung up on her, she’s determined to break away from him…only she ends up offering him her spare room to stay in.  * sigh *

Of these contradictions are human beings made, and with some pretty sharp writing and stong performances that’s what makes Free Agents interesting.  Only, is that dynamic an inherently funny one?  Well, tv comedies can develop from some pretty twisted dynamics — the tortured father and son double act of Steptoe and Son, the tormented marriage of Sybil and Basil Fawlty.

So there’s every reason to believe this relationship can work, comedically.  Only, I’m not convinced that Niel believes that.  Hence the somewhat shoehorned business of boss Anthony Head and his incredible sexual obsessions: remember that incredible can mean implausible.  And I suspect the temptation is to cut to Anthony whenever there’s a danger of the relationship between Alex and Helen getting too serious: easier to do another sex toy gag than risk alienating the beery Friday night audience with couple trauma.

It would have been easier for Niel had he opted for a different tone: Cold Feet is justifiably remembered for its depiction of contemporary relationships betwen professionals.  But Free Agents is pitched before the couples do the settling down thing, at that stage where neurosis and insecurity are even more pronounced and become reasons for not settling down: the blinkers are off.

For all that, there’s still a credible connection between the two leads.  Their incoherent irrational behaviour with one another is entirely credible, and not in a contrived fashion that makes you want to bash their heads together so they can see what they mean to each other and settle down.  They’re more interesting than that, and it seems pretty feasible that either Alex or Helen could end up pairing off with the knock-offs they’ve respectively acquired over the six episodes.

This being the finale, things come to a head.  Helen and Alex realise that they are drawn to one another, and it’s done believably…except once again for the backdrop of Anthony Head marrying a prostitute.  There is, presumably, a point being made here about the comparative nature of their relationships, but it doesn’t bear much investigation.  And Head’s performance is perfectly and predictably fine: it just seems to belong to a different show than the rest of the script.

It’ll be interesting to see where Free Agents goes if it’s commissioned again.  Bring the pair together and you lose at least some of the show’s unique selling point: instead it metamorphoses into a sour Terry & June.  And I’m not sure the world needs that.  But can the series survive if the two of them are kept arbitrarily apart for the sake of the concept?  Watch this space…

There’s a sequence at the start of Wes Anderson’s Rushmore when the teen protagonist stages an adaptation of Al Pacino thriller Serpico as a school play.  It’s correct in most details, as long as you’re kind enough to overlook the central problem: schoolkids playing adults look kinda dumb when it’s done so straight, and the consequence is you’ve got to wonder whether it’s worth the bother.

There’s a similar dilemma at the heart of Zack Snyder’s adaptation of the Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons graphic novel classic Watchmen.  It’s done pretty well at a purely visual level, but in the process of adapting a story that utilises the devices of a comic more effectively than pretty much any other, it demonstrates precisely why writer Alan Moore claimed the story wouldn’t work on screen, and Terry Gilliam agreed with him.  What you’re left with is like one of the sketches by autistic teenage artists that crop up on slow news days from time to time: convincing in every respect, but lacking the heart of the original.

So, congratulations Zack Snyder: you’ve put the autistic into auteur. It takes a while to realise, that’s all: the opening sequence setting up a world in which masked vigilantes play a part in 20th century history is superbly achieved, if slightly portentuous against a Bob Dylan song and in the slo-mo that characterises much of the film’s action.

The film is heading for 3 hours long, and I swear they could cut it by 20 minutes if they ran it at normal speed.  But then we wouldn’t get to fetishise the visual detail that Snyder has plucked from the comic and put on screen for us to enjoy.  And some of it is, sure enough, mighty impressive — the director is at home with this techy side of filmmaking.  It’s when human beings are involved that it gets tricky for poor Zack, which is perhaps why he’s made his career with two films where the bulk of the cast are interchangeable: zombies (in Dawn of the Dead) and Spartans (300).

There’s an inherent problem with the way that Snyder presents the superheroes: the comic fully intends them to be mortal, fallible, and not a little ridiculous.  But Snyder wants them to inspire the same awe that Batman does — sometimes anyway — when he’s onscreen.  Which misses the point in a major way.  Watchmen’s protagonists are fuck-ups in the original: onscreen they are every bit as lithe and shiny as the characters the story was designed to deconstruct.

Nevertheless, and if only through the law of averages, there are some good performances.  The strongest is unquestionably Rorschach, whose unwavering moral conviction puts him at the centre of the story as he investigates the death of a former teammate.  Jackie Earle Haley plays the role superbly, and there are several scenes in which Rorschach is every bit as unsettling as the comic intends him to be.  He is masked almost permanently, and the simple bandage-plus-Rorschach-inkblots design works very well: this is mask as Greek theatre intended, a way of tapping into unconscious power.  Pity the same can’t be said for some of the other costumes, which err on the side of trying to be cool in a way that they never were in the comics.

The weakest scenes belong to mother and daughter Carla Gugino and Malin Akerman.  Carla is the original Silk Spectre, a cheesecake take on the vigilante there for the launch parties as much as anything, and Malin takes up the mantle later.  The complex dynamics between them, and the twisted history that binds them, sadly come across as a daytime soap opera, which is a shame as I sense Akerman in particular is capable of a strong performance.  Pity that Snyder is less capable of generating one.

Is Watchmen worth seeing?  I’m not sure how comprehensible it is to someone unfamiliar with the source material: what emotional hit it provides is as much from the memories of the page as what happens onscreen.  Let’s hope that next time Alan Moore says his work is unsuited for screen adaptation, someone actually believes him rather than assuming that what’s groundbreaking in one medium can easily translate to another.  It doesn’t often happen the other way round: how many good comic versions of films are there?  But for some reason (ker-ching) studios insist that the journey can work well the other way.  As for the director; Snyderman does whatever a Snyder can, but that sure doesn’t involve making quality versions of stories that are brighter than he is.

That’s the way to do it. The warcry of archetypal British aggro-puppet Punch, and a pretty good summary of what Bronson achieves. It’s a classic example of how to make a low budget film that punches above its weight, a wilfully controversial tale of a prisoner famous for his violent exploits in the penal and mental health systems.

Director Nicolas Winding Refn and co-writer Brock Norman Brock have kept a canny eye open to the power of Australian prison shocker Chopper, another tale of a brutal and pathetic con dominated by a charismatic central performance (Eric Bana’s) and arthouse sensibility, assisted in this case by director of photography Larry Smith, most known for his work with Stanley Kubrick.

Make no mistake, Bronson makes a strong assault on your sensibilities, cleverly bringing a tabloid monster to life with devices that might tire with a less compelling lead. The protagonist holds the centre stage, and we get to see him parade up and down on it like a musichall performer, a legend in his own mind, and with some impact beyond it…we’d not be tempted to see a film about him otherwise.

This is quality stuff in almost every respect, from the episodic narrative that dips in and out of its protagonist’s life to highlight different facets of this repulsive but fascinating man, to a shooting style that makes the most of the limited palette of its lead’s surroundings. No attempt is made to present a Freudian copout that ‘explains’ Bronson’s violence: it’s what he resorts to since his desire to achieve fame is limited by his inability to do anything else but hurt people.

The use of classical music helps disguise what seems to be a pretty cheap movie: a blast of opera or an orchestra goes a long way in papering over the cracks of a low budget, especially when the sources are copyright-free. Plus, it makes the occasional use of more modern music, such as Pet Shop Boys, that much more effective.

Violence is, not unexpectedly, a recurrent theme in the story. Bronson hurts people first to achieve notoriety, then to maintain it, but ultimately because it’s all he knows. As he ruefully acknowledges, his plans haven’t come to fruition, mostly because he hasn’t got any. But he certainly makes an impact doing things the wrong way, earning a reputation as Britain’s most expensive prisoner for the riots he causes.

Ultimately, the film faces the same limitations as its protagonist. The episodic structure and use of fantastic attention-grabbing devices such as Bronson having a debate with a nurse who is in fact himself with his face painted down one side; and getting a prison librarian to smear him with cream in a not-at-all-homoerotic way before yet another confrontation with guards…it all delays the inevitable conclusion that, fascinating as he is, you only want to spend so long in Bronson’s company.

Fortunately the filmmakers are aware of that, and the story ends pretty crisply just at the point when I was starting to think it might be dragging. Or maybe that was part of the point, to bring alive how repetitive Bronson’s life is.  Bronson is a powerful example of British low budget cinema at its finest, even if its director is Danish.

Films that play with the notion of the fourth wall, the one that separates characters from audience, are hardly new.  And there is a certain kind of flirtatiousness about the concept that can provoke a self-aware smile.  Which is all very well when you’re watching a film made by and for adults, but is that necessarily the best approach made for an audience of seven year olds?

Having seen Bolt, I suggest that the answer is no.  I’m generally a fan of the modern animated family movie, at least when it has Pixar connections.  And Bolt delivers much of what you’d expect from the people who brought you Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc, and The Incredibles.  Problem being that the story tries too hard to emulate the success of its forebears, and the slightly too clever-clever script reminds you of that at intervals, with its talk of appealing to the adult demographic and a character talking about precisely the stage of the Hero’s Journey that the protagonist has reached.

Admittedly, some of this will just fly over the head of most children, unless they’re precocious McKee readers that you’re presumably hothousing in the hope that their screenwriting careers will keep you in a secure old age.  But, nevertheless, it feels pretty intrusive at times.

The pretext for all this postmodern shenanigans is that the puppy protagonist of the film is the star of a tv action series but in Truman Show fashion has the truth kept from him lest that burst the bubble of his relationship with the young girl whose life he saves every episode.  Only, the pup escapes from the bogus world and has to survive on the real (albeit animated) streets, accepting that he is a regular dog, with only a trusty band of animal companions to help get Bolt back to his person.

The first chunk of the story presents Bolt in his action hero persona, and is oodles of fun, especially with 3D glasses bringing the helicopter and motorbike action into your face like a razor that’s even closer still.  That’d be the normality of his world then, before the inciting incident which releases him into a more prosaic reality.  In the course of reuniting Bolt with his owner, he has to go through a variety of ordeals to make him a true hero, accepting the reality of his situation and triumphing nonetheless.

Naturally, Bolt wins through, having to emulate the heroism of his tv persona in a real fire that threatens his owner’s life, all too aware of the prospect of death.  And he triumphs, which is what you do when there’s an audience full of toddlers who’d be traumatised by having a dog barbecued in front of them.  Never let it be said that this is a film unaware of its responsibilities.

And that, ultimately, is where Bolt falls down.  So fixated is the script on getting its hero from Plot Point A to Plot Point Z, that it rarely stops to enjoy the potential fun of the situation it has created.  The showbiz-conscious aspects of the story, with pigeons pitching story ideas that are ultimately used in the film’s conclusion, are no fun compared to the sheer zest that Toy Story has in connecting with its audience.

Thinking about it, I was more involved with the trailer for Ice Age 3 that preceded Bolt than I was with the main event.  And that’s instructive: the former was a simple and sweet silent tale of two critturs attracted to one another but vying for possession of an acorn.  The graphics were no more or less magnificent than those of Bolt, but there was a heart to those few minutes that didn’t compare to the relentless pacemaker of Bolt.

The idea of a mockumentary on the transhumanist movement is an interesting one.  Certainly there’s something ludicrous about some of the proponents of immortality, downloading your consciousness into digital form, nanotechnology, and so on.  But it’s the kind of ludicrous that could have something in it, especially in a world where America’s black president is pushing billions into alternative energy research, tabloids can’t get enough of the final days of a reality tv star, and New Scientist runs a cover story suggesting that the universe is a hologram.

Maybe the truly ludicrous aspect of Transhuman is that it appears in the form of a comic.  The four issue series is out in a newly collected edition, written by Jonathan Hickman, previously praised in these parts for his debut work, Nightly News.  This time round, he writes but doesn’t draw, and that makes for some interesting shifts of perception about his capabilities: Hickman’s radical page designs in Nightly News perhaps made it easy to camouflage weaknesses in its writing.  Here, with art by J.M. Ringuet, the appearance of the pages is more conventional: does the story suffer as a result?

It turns out that the answer is a qualified ‘no’.  There’s still some playing about with form and process, chunks of the story held together by the questions asked by a narrator, whose text reads white on black and is generally unseen.  That device works well, but I’m less convinced that the faux-reportage does.  It’s effective enough, but arguably serves to distance the reader from the story.  On the other hand, it serves a purpose, and allows Hickman to construct a reasonably fascinating tale about the future history of transhumanism through interviews with some of the key figures involved in turning the movement into something real.

The story relates the intrigues of a number of characters involved at the centre of the research and business growth of different strands of transhumanism.  One of Hickman’s successes is that he manages to turn an opening chapter on the science involved, and a subsequent one on venture capitalism, into credible and sometimes wittily depicted vignettes.  Sure, the tone varies in the process, as the tale goes from personal intrigue to twisted humour as experimental subjects are seen before and after they have treatments to make them into transhumans.  But overall the effect works well, and it’s good to see someone other than Warren Ellis tackle this kind of material with the intelligence it deserves.

Ringuet’s art is assured, if at times somewhat static: but maybe that’s a function of the fact that much of the tale needs little more than talking heads to be effective.  It more than does the job anyway.  Let’s hope that Hickman can maintain the quality of his writing while working with Marvel, which is where he now is.  And if that doesn’t work out in the long run, there’s a career for Hickman in producing twisted infographics for The Onion, where his satirical sensibility and design skills would fit more naturally than they do with the home of Spiderman and The Incredible Hulk.  Here’s to a future in which talents like Hickman can flourish without having to pimp themselves out to the publishers of trademarked superheroes.

The police procedural story can be a pretty tired genre.  It’s brought to life when the procedures themselves are unfamiliar.  Which is where Lau Ching Wan scores as Officer Bun, asking a subordinate to put him into a suitcase and throw him down the stairs.  He tumbles down, emerging battered from the luggage, and announces that the killer is the man who owns the ice-cream parlour.  Result.

As with ‘Beat’ Takeshi’s Violent Cop, there’s something pretty on-the-nose about the title of Mad Detective.  It’s made by Johnnie To and Wai Ka Fai, the team behind a host of leftfield Hong Kong hits in recent years, and the titular detective spends most of the film with a bandage around his head in case you were wondering the nature of his problem.

My interest in the film is partly because I’m slowly exploring the world of Asian cinema.  Also, I’m working on a screenplay about a cop undergoing a psychotic episode.  One aspect of the film I liked was that you’re not really sure about what’s made Bun mad.  Oh, there are clues in the presence of his ex wife, who only he can see, but there’s no implication that one moment with her led to Bun’s insanity.  It doesn’t work like that: didn’t at any rate for me with my bipolarity, and it’s refreshing to see a film that doesn’t do simplistic theorising about mental health.

Instead, the film pulls you into Bun’s madness from his own perspective.  Ask Bun, and he’ll tell you that he sees the inner selves of people around him.  That claim to special insight is not unusual in cases of mental illness.  Careful cutting between Bun’s worldview, which includes people only he sees, and what onlookers notice, allows glimpses into the realms of the protagonist’s interior world.  Maybe not rocket science in an era of Charlie Kaufman’s and Michel Gondry’s glorious conceits, but a great way to bring Mad Detective to life.

The plot, concocted by screenwriters Wai Ko Fau and Au Kin Yee, is relatively complex, involving the disappearance of a detective and the use of his gun in a series of violent robberies.  Bun, removed from the police force since he severed off one of his ears to present to a retiring officer, is consulted by a young cop, Ho, who looks up to him and wants to emulate his eccentric methods.  Only, lacking Bun’s off-beam perceptions, Ho doesn’t get much out of being buried in the forest where the missing cop was last seen.

What makes Mad Detective special is its visual flair, some amazing images being realised in alignment with the film’s narrative rather than self-indulgently.  Seven people whistling nonchalantly as they strut down the street, each facets of the antagonist’s character.  A spray of water that Bun interprets as a good omen.  And a showdown in a warehouse full of window frames, potted plants reflected in them to echo the forest where the antagonist and his partner first disappeared.

Is it a good representation of mental illness?  I’m not sure that Mad Detective or any other film is obliged to shoulder that burden.  Coveying the subjectivity of psychosis through making the images and voices perceived by its sufferer visible and audible to the audience is a highly effective means of making the condition live on screen, and make people aware how near and at the same time far it is from normal states of consciousness.

Mad Detective is interesting enough that a remake to remove its distinctness is perhaps inevitable.  If we’re lucky, it’ll be of the same calibre as Scorsese’s reinvention of Infernal Affairs as The Departed.  More likely, it’ll become yet another forgettable cover version, like the ones that have been made of any number of Japanese horror films.