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A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

WARNING: THIS COMMENTARY CONTAINS INPORTANT SPOILERS. SO PLEASE STOP READING NOW IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED THE MOVIE. The movie comes across as pulpy in the first 10 minutes (I didn't know it came from a book and TV series when I watched it). The characters of the supposed leads, Masaharu Fukuyama and Ko Shibasaki, are one-dimensional throughout. Thankfully, Shin'ichi Tsutsumi and Yasuko Matsuyuki brought depth and weight. Tsutsumi especially. He draws you in with his portrayal of his character. It's enigmatic and convincing. A very fine actor indeed.The movie shines when it delves into the human drama and the contest of wits and wills between the two male protagonists. The mountain climbing segment is superb, a magnificent allegory of the intellectual power-play between the two men. ***SPOILERS*** Unfortunately, the movie didn't succeed fully on the logical brilliance it is premised on. There seems to be two serious flaws. First is the identification of the body through matching the fingerprints found on the bicycle with those from the hotel the victim stayed in. Certainly real-life police would know that is inconclusive. They would certainly confirm only with fingerprints on official records.Secondly, a man of Ishigami's brilliance could certainly foretell that the likelihood of Kanaoka accepting his sacrifice is low to start with, or at least there is no guarantee of his plan's success. And Kanaoka would hear about it from news whether Yukawa tells her about it or not. And for Ishigami to take an innocent life is totally inconsistent with his character, no matter how powerful and overwhelming love is. The movie would have been great if not for these flaws. But it is still a pretty good movie principally because of Tsutsumi's performance and the human drama. I would have given it at least 8/10 if not for the logic flaws.

This movie is one of the best crime thriller I've seen in it some time. As soon as the lead characters are shown, I'd the idea that this is going to be a different ride. The movie doesn't waste anytime getting into the plot which thickens and becomes interesting as the movie goes on. The dynamics between the two master-minds is the highlight of this one.The plan for the cover-up is brilliant. We feel that the cover-up takes care of all the things, or so it seems. We are shown a couple of clues on to how the cover-up is done but it's subtle. If we focus on the movie, we can spot these and then piece the plot together before it's actually revealed. This makes the movie even more interesting. As the movie reach its final act, we see a significant change of tone to focus more on the emotions. The climax will have a deep impact on you.It's must watch for all the movie lovers and especially for crime thriller fans.

I thought my movie report on "SUSPECT X" below had no spoilers yet possibly touched upon some plot elements so be careful, OK? "SUSPECT X" was a sequel of the popular mystery drama on TV "GALILEO". I would most certainly be satisfied if I could enjoy this one free of charge on TV or a DVD rental at most. I wished the director or the screen writer had spent more time on elaborating the plot line and characters.As a mystery, the story was neither thrilling nor exciting, in my point of view. It was kind of too easy for me to guess what would happen next and what was awaiting in the end. The highlight of this TV drama was to shake the alibi of suspects through logical thinking and scientific approach; unfortunately the highlight seemed to be neglected this time.As a human drama plus love story, this one could have achieved a movie quality impression if the following conditions were taken into account. First, why was the suspect X or the math genius in terrible despair? Second, how could the heroine and her daughter cheer up this unsociable mathematician and help him to rebound from that despair? And third, how could the accidental death of the pimp or the ex-husband of the heroine be significant enough to involve all innocent people into tragedy and had them resign to their fate? It was a premise to thoroughly describe above why and how to develop characters and convince me of X's self-sacrifice or his unconditional love, I thought.By the way, If I were the X, I would recommend she give herself up to the police and confess that she had no choice but protect her and her daughter in self-defence. And If I were the detective, I would refer to autopsy reports and look up call logs and put X behind bars in three days. That is it.

'Yougisha X no Kenshin' is battle of wits between the physicist "Galileo" Yukawa (Fukuyama Masaharu) and his university friend and genius mathematician Ishigami (Tsutsumi Shinichi). The first 10 minutes of this film was just like the TV dorama series, light comedy filled with physics jargon, but it soon turns into a completely different, stand-alone movie. This movie and Galileo dorama are both based on the same mystery novel series, but this movie was more of a suspense movie with a touch of human drama because it was very clear from beginning who the culprits were.The movie was surprisingly well-directed for a dorama director. There were many epic, well-executed slow motion scenes, and somehow he completely removed dorama cheesiness for majority of the play time.Fukuyama Masaharu and Shibasaki Kou's acting were sub-par, but the "supporting" actors Tsutsumi Shinichi and Matsuyuki Yasuko were INCREDIBLE. I have already seen couple of similar characters Tsutsumi played in his long dorama career, but I was surprised how perfect he was for this role and made me sympathize with his character even though he played a bad guy. Matsushima Yasuko was solid as usual, though she over-acted in couple of places. Still, she depicted her character well. Tsutsumi Shinichi and Matsushima Yasuko were credited with supporting actor/actress in this film, but they each got almost as much screen-time as Fukuyama Masaharu, and I don't think it can be disputed that those two were the de-facto leading actor and actress in this movie. Shibasaki Kou is one of my favorite actresses, but she was a non-factor in terms of both screen presence and acting quality.Although I liked the comedy in the dorama series, I'm glad they changed the style for this movie. The plot involved very little physics and mathematics, but focused on the human side of the guest characters: What was the motivation for Suspect X's involvement? The meaning of the title "Devotion of Suspect X", devotion indeed. This is one of those movies that sinks in a while after the ending credits.There is a metaphor I really liked in this film. "Is it harder to create a question no one can solve, or solve that unsolvable question?" This reminded me of the word origin "mujun" (contradiction) in Japanese, which writes "Spear-Shield" in kanji. It's an imported Chinese word derived from an ancient philosophical text where a salesman was selling a "spear that can break through any shields" and a "shield that can defend against any spear", but was dumbfounded when someone asked him what happens if he used the spear on the shield. A truly clever metaphor it is!I really connected with Tsutsumi and Matsuyuki's characters, and although I didn't cry while watching this movie, I heard couple of other audience in the theater crying. 'Yougisha X' movie is a very serious and deep movie in contrast to the dorama, and I have enjoyed every moment of it.