Suspect X

Japanese title: 容疑者Ｘの献身
Rating: PG
Running time: 128 minutes
Now out on DVD and Blu-ray!

Some info:
1) AsianMediaWiki
2) IMDB Profile
3) Official Site (Japanese)

The highly anticipated movie spinoff from the popular drama series, it turns out that this movie is, in my opinion, a little different from the usual fare and style that I’ve seen in the drama series. Perhaps I was looking forward to something similar in terms of the scientific proving as well as the experiment to prove the hypothesis that I found this movie to kinda fall short of my expectations.

Anyway, the movie continues from the ending scenes of the special episode aired last year, and Yukawa does conduct an experiment to prove his concept on how the ship at sea can be brought down intentionally by shooting at it. This is probably the only part where there’s actual scientific experimenting and stuff that’s similar to what is usually seen in the series. Yup, there isn’t even the trademark scribbling equations and stuff to assert Yukawa’s thinking about the case. Heh.

Furthermore, due to quite a bit of advertising on 933 back then, I came to know that the movie’s culprit will be a maths genius, and the battle between the 2 smart people is supposed to be the highlight. But apparently, it’s not really the case, as I felt it’s not a very complex case. It’s more of a different kind of love story. The case is made really not very intriguing, especially to viewers since they have all the knowledge required and are given hints and clues from the beginning.

Well, there are some Maths and stuff mentioned in the course of the movie, but they don’t really form a critical part in the storyline (at least I didn’t find it so), except maybe the trick to look at the problem from a different angle. Otherwise, it’s pretty much a simple movie with a fairly simple case that doesn’t require much thinking and imagination on the part of the viewers. Oh, and I think I can sort of understand why the theme song of the movie is titled 最爱. Didn’t quite get it when the single came out last year, but I think I know why it is used as the theme song after watching the movie. Haha.

Overall, if you are looking for something like what you see in the drama series, I would say that you’re going to be somewhat disappointed, if not more. However, it does have its own merits, even though they may not enough to cover the gap in expectation and anticipation. Still not too bad I guess, though I really had expected more. My take: 6/10