Jmovie review: Ace Attorney / Gyakuten Saiban

Everytime I review a Miike film, I always start of with how much a hits and miss director he is. In terms of videogame adaptations, I am still angry at him for wasting the potential of Ryu ga Gotoku movie. Instead of adapting a hard boiled yakuza movie with some absurd situations, he turned it into an absurd movie and with a yakuza story that wasn't built up properly. Still, Ace Attorney is my most anticipated jmovie this year besides the Berserk movies and word from the festival screenings has been good. I wanted to see at the MIFF but unfortunately, tickets for two screenings were already sold out.I played Ace Attorney for a bit a long time ago and finished the first game this year in anticipation of the movie.



Ace Attorney is undoubtedly the greatest video game to movie adaptation ever. Miike has embraced the absurd in this one and cut down the 6 cases into 3 with a 2 hour and 15 minutes runtime. Instead of grounding it in 'reality' Miike has taken all the elements of the game and made them real. The three cases though are inserted into the movie in passing. Most importantly, the movie takes itself seriously. The actors are really the game characters come to life and there's no winking at the camera.



From the beginning, I had a huge smile on my face because the movie is as faithful to the source material as Watchmen. I can't believe the actors actually succeeded in making the facial expressions from the game. Its the first time I've seen real live action actually look like drawings. It shows Miike has actually played the game, unlike Ryu ga gotoku. The only thing missing were Mia Fey's cleavage.



For people who have played the game, Ace Attorney movie is a blast to watch. Most of the time I'm just goes oohhh I remember this or ahhh, I can't believe that appeared in the movie! No idea who it would play for people who have not played the game but I suspect they mind find it a bit long. With 3 court cases and not much character stuff. Must watch if you've played the game. If you have not, I recommend the game more than the movie.



Just ran out of upload space on blogger. WTF. Uploading from photobucket is a pain. Sigh. I wonder if there's a way to store pictures on gmail and upload it to blogger? One complaint though is that the subtitles used the English names from the game which doesn't work in a Japanese movie. Its like watching Macross and Hikaru is translated as Rick. I understand its for fans of the game but I'm pretty sure the fans will recognise the characters even with Japanese names. It was very jarring for me with different names being spoken and written and some of the puns with Naruhodo's name didn't work with the subtitles saying Wright.






Kita Yoshio had to show up somewhere. :)