Suspect X

Genre: Suspense

Language: Japanese

Director: Hiroshi Nishitani

Cast: Kou Shibasaki, Masaharu Fukuyama, Kazuki Kitamura

Runtime: 130 min

Plot:

A male body is discovered. He is strangled to death where his face pulverized beyond recognition and fingers burned to a crisp. Kaoru Utsumi (Kou Shibasaki) is assigned to the case. The police face great difficulty in cracking the case. Thus, she seeks advice from brilliant physicist Manabu Yukawa (Masaharu Fukuyama), aka Detective Galileo. After analyzing the case, Yukawa suspects that the true genius behind everything is Tetsuya Ishigami (Shinichi Tsutsumi), the neighbor of victim's ex-wife. Ishigami happens to be Yukawa's college friend whom he regards as a true mathematics genius. Elaborate bluffs, false testimonials, loopholes in logic - all begin to appear in Detective Galileo's way as if intentionally placed as a challenge by someone with mathematical brilliance.

Watched this movie on 27 Feb late night @ GV Vivo with Sylvia.

The movie was a film version to the drama - Galileo, which is based on Detective Galileo (探偵ガリレオ, Tantei Garireo), a novel by the famous mystery writer Keigo Higashino (東野 圭吾,, Higashino Keigo). It narrates the events and cases encountered by Kaoru Utsumi, a rookie detective, and Manabu Yukawa, a university associate professor, while the two pair up to solve many mysterious cases.

Although the main casts are the same as the drama version, the movie version seems very draggy compared to the drama. There seems to be many details to be told to have the story complete. There was a lot of slow motion scenes that make the movie even slower and longer. And I feel there are some parts that may not be necessary needed such as the mountain-climbing part.

During the drama, Professor Yukawa also using his formulas and analysis to solve the mysteries but I don't see that unique part in the movie for the main case. Thus it becomes just another suspense movie that loses its own uniqueness. Probably, only the answer was the only thing that was impressive.

ah-deng says: 1½/5 If you are a fan of Detective Galileo, the drama version is much better.