Plot
Chan Kwai-Bun (Lau Ching-Wan) is a brilliant detective with a supernatural gift seeing a person's "inner personalities," or hidden ghosts. However, he is forced into retirement after severing his ear and presenting it to his retiring boss with his severed ear.
Years later, Inspector Ho Ka-On (Andy On) is investigating the case of Wong Kwok-Chu (Lee Kwok-Lun), a colleague who went missing when he and his partner, Ko Chi-Wai were in pursuit of a suspect. Wong has been AWOL for 18 months, and his gun has been used in a series of armed robberies. Ho turns to Bun, who now lives in seclusion with his imaginary wife, May Cheung (Kelly Lin).
Bun comes out of retirement and discovers that rather than being one man, Chi-Wai is a seven-spirit collective, with each perhaps representing an aspect of the seven deadly sins with the head, or brain, being a business-like woman. He also discovers that Chi-Wai had his gun stolen by an Indian, named Naresh Sherma, so he killed Wong to steal his gun.
When investigating, Bun takes Ho's gun and identification and runs off. Chi-Wai assaults Ho, in an attempt to take his stolen gun. Bun meets Ho again later on where he sees Ho's inner personality, a scared, bewildered child. Ho attempts to take in Chi-Wai by himself but, upon finding out that Chi-Wai's gun, which was taken from Wong, matched Chi-Wai's gun (Chi-Wai altered his gun's information online), he begins to trust Chi-Wai. Bun sends an SMS to Ho, telling him that after Chi-Wai gets his old gun back again by killing Naresh, he would kill Ho, but the latter does not believe him.
Chi-Wai and Ho go to a warehouse and find Naresh, with Bun in pursuit. Bun tries to warn Ho of what will happen again, but Ho, not believing Bun and believing that Bun is the enemy, calls him in order to reveal his position. A shootout occurs, ultimately leading to Naresh and Bun pointing their guns at Chi-Wai and Ho pointing his girlfriend's gun at Bun. Chi-Wai kills Naresh while Ho shoots Bun. Chi-Wai turns and shoots Ho, as predicted by Bun. Bun, however, begins to limp towards Chi-Wai, who shoots and fatally wounds him. Bun ultimately kills Chi-Wai.
Just as Bun dies, he sees Ho's inner personality, the scared boy, being led by a business-like woman, which looks eerily similar to the woman that led Chi-Wai. Ho then begins to rearrange everyone's guns and fabricate a story of what happened in the warehouse.
Read more about this topic: Mad Detective
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