Sunday, November 10, 2013

Maki Horikita: Into the White Night/Byakuyako movie review


Main Cast:

Maki Horikita as Yukiho Karasawa
Kengo Kora as Ryouji Kirihara
Eichiro Funakoshi as Det. Junjo Sasagaki
Nobou Kyo as Kazunari Shinozuka
Yurie Midori as Erika Kawashima
Urara Awata as Noriko Kurihara
Tetsushi Tanaka as IsamuMatsuura


 Saw the 2006 drama a few years back and it's remained one of my faves up until this day, going to be hard for a film to beat it. One thing that's going to hurt is that the movie is only 145 minutes long while the drama was over 6 hours long, does the film have a chance to come close to as great as the drama was then?



 Well, the answer to the above is a big NO!!!! I actually wasn't even planning on doing any posts on this film as it really was not a good, enjoyable or interesting watch but took so many screenshots figured I may as well. Going to keep the review/synopsis short then as I'd rather not think too much about the film:
 This movie is simply a retired detective trying to solve a 20 year old murder case of a pawn broker in Osaka. One suspect was the pawn brokers assistant who disappeared after the police grilled him but he was innocent anyways. The other suspect was Yukiho's mother who died from cyanide poisoning, at first it was considered a suicide but it was really a murder. So with both suspects gone the police closed the case but one detective, Sasagaki, continued to hunt down the murderer of the pawn broker and Yukiho's mother.



 Twenty years later Sasagaki is now retired but is still working on the case, his main suspect is now the young 10 year old who is now 30, Kirihara. He suspected him of killing his father who was the pawn broker and also Yukiho's mother, seemed as both were having an affair. The main reason for him killing his father as he tried to have his way with the young Yukiho, when the son saw what was about to happen he killed his father with a pair of scissors. Also Kirihara was the one who killed the mother with cyanide, true his childhood wasn't all that great but still what a fiendish person he was and he only got worse in the future.
 Jumping to present day Yukiho had married into a wealthy family even though she didn't love the son, she was using him and the family to get ahead, how much ahead the film doesn't get into like the drama did. Behind the scenes Kirihara was keeping tabs on her, anyone getting too close or putting her into any kind of danger met with death, he is not a good person. However at the end Sasagaki's efforts paid off as he finally was able to trap Kirihara who admitted to all the evil doings from the last 20 years, however right after his confession he leapt off a roof to his death, so ends the film.... thankfully for the viewer.


 That's all the recap for the film I'm going to give, actually was a lot longer than planned. You can't take a 10+ hour drama and squeeze it into a 145 minute movie, it usually doesn't work and this is a prime example of that. It was so slow paced and uninteresting, it took me 3 sessions to get through the film as it was just so boring, if you have insomnia this would be a perfect movie to watch as it was hard staying awake..... honestly, it was just so slow and boring to the max!!!!
 So even if you're a huge Maki fan like me still can't recommend it, she doesn't come in until the 1/2 hour mark, her role is big but really meaty or demanding, have plenty of screenshots of her in the next post. Final grade for this film is going to be a very generous 5/10, it should be skipped. However if you haven't seen the Byakuyako drama then you should, that series I highly recommend and would give that a grade of a 9.5/10, really was a fantastic watch.





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