The Singing Detective was originally a critically acclaimed avant-garde musical mini-series directed by Dennis Porter and broadcast by BBC to rave reviews. This remake is directed by Keith Gordon, best known for the crafty style of Mother Night, a film adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Mel Gibson stepped in to take the producer’s chair, which made the film the talk of the town for a while. The plot of the film itself is very simple, as it was the original version. Dan Dark, a pulp writer, gets hospitalized for a chronic skin disease that slowly disfigures his face, turning it into a grotesque horror. However, he denies the routine treatment and becomes the subject of severe mental treatment. Tied up in his bed, he tries to rewrite his debut, The Singing Detective, in his head, and at that point the walls between fantasy and reality start to crumble. Dan Dark ends up identifying himself with the novel’s hero, a detective investigating the murder of a whore in 1950s L.A. It doesn’t wander too far away from the original in that the painful memories - the main cause of his deep-rooted misogyny and pessimism - are gradually revealed to the audience, sometimes through distorted flashbacks, and sometimes through fits of melodic song. This new version, however, was met with extremely conflicting reviews and controversies regarding the massive and radical, albeit more audience-friendly, re-interpretations of social consciousness and avant-garde parodies, which were distinct features of the original BBC version. Robert Downey Jr. starring as the hero Dan Dark, and Mel Gibson, as his psychiatrist, turn in hilarious performances. (KIM Sang-hoon)