Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Iseerphia All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

Stephan Hammond It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Married Baby Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Hanzel Jesheen 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.

paul david Not sure too many people will be watching this movie outside of Japan, I have caught it on DVD here in Indonesia and i found it a very interesting movie to watch. Japanese do things differently, like the French, and this was a crime thriller not so much about catching the killer or having to find out who did it but about motivation. the maths teacher Mr AShiguro is obviously essential to this story and I love the scene towards the end up the snowy mountain, great drama and great scenery, wow! I sense a naivity in the basic story line and I would have liked to see more understanding and reasoning behind why the husband returned at that particular time in the womans life; reference is made to her having first met him at a Club, so was she a geisha girl or stripper or something before or just a bar girl? Not aware this is part of a series and the DVD is entitled SUSPECT X, easier title than the one above. of course I watched with satisfactory sub-titles in English. The film is well put together but even so I cant highly rate it, hence only 6 points.

Funn Lim The following is my reply to Charlie Ishiyama's queries raised in his review in this site;"First, why was the suspect X or the math genius in terrible despair?" If attention is paid to the entire length of the movie itself, subtle hints were dropped throughout which I feel answered this query adequately. We know he would have had a brilliant career if not for his mother's illness which took him away from his work and ended up in a dead end job as an under-appreciated Math teacher in high school. He was alone, lonely and naturally emotionally despair. He looked old despite his relatively not that old age and he is unsatisfied both in life, love and especially in his career, not having realized his full potential and to have Yukawa declared him as a genius, it is quite obvious for the reasons for his terrible despair."Second, how could the heroine and her daughter cheer up this unsociable mathematician and help him to rebound from that despair?" Again subtlety explained this question. The end of the movie revealed why. He was about to kill himself when he was interrupted by friendly new neighbor, in the form of the heroine and her daughter, both cheerful and lovely. That woke him up and listening to their daily banter through the thin wall separating the 2 tiny apartments made him feel like he was part of their family that he so craves. He was lifted out of despair with the promise or rather the hope that one day he might be part of that family although he may wished but never really actually wanted to try to do that. The fact that he is unsociable and he seems so surprised at the knock on the door meant he has never had such welcome before by friendly neighbors. His loneliness dissipated with their appearance and along the way he fell for her."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." There wasn't many innocent people, just 2, one is suspect x himself and the other I shall not reveal to preserve the integrity of the ending. The point is that of shock and to bring into question about how far suspect x would go to preserve the life of his beloved. That is the shock element in the end, one that even Yukawa never thought of despite his genius in deduction and in the end not just left the heroine broken due to her conscience or Suspect X due to his cruel foolishness but also Yukawa who had more faith in his friend than his friend deserves and that broke Yukawa as a person. If you have watched from the TV series to the movie itself, Yukawa is a man of logic but in this movie he contemplated other things other than logic and that presented a different facet of Yukawa. In the end this is a movie about Yukawa Manabu and how his friend suspect x broke him down in the sense Yukawa may have won the deduction battle but he still lost in the end. In fact everybody losses. A significant dialog that summarizes Yukawa's conflict and Ishigami's sacrifice is the question posed by Yukawa to Utsumi and Utsumi's answer to him at the end. It sounds simplistic, that one word, love but it is perhaps as complicated as presented in this movie."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." Maybe the stigma is different in Japan? Maybe the sentencing is different? I believe this movie is really clever in presenting the situation and how 2 men approach the same situation differently. If you're thinking this is about how one man created alibis and how the other solves it, you're wrong. This is a movie that goes beyond that. It is repetitive at some places, some slow paces but in the end it is a brilliant movie that after it finishes and a long time after makes you think; is Suspect X a villain or the good guy? Was the heroine foolish to do what she did in the end despite the sacrifices of the other? Was Yukawa right to reveal the truth which would hurt everybody? How far would one go for the sake of love? How much would one do for the sake of gratitude? How much would one reveal for the sake of the truth? This movie reveals that through 3 important characters.It is decidedly darker than the TV series but no less brilliant in its plot, clever in the ending and made very stylishly. Performance wise, I find everybody brilliant and a great big credit must go to the 2 very charismatic actors, Fukuyama Masaharu for standing his ground against a more accomplished & well known as an actor, Tsutsumi Shinichi and of course Tsutsumi Shinichi himself. I didn't quite like Matsuyuki Yasuko because I do not like the typical acting by a Japanese actress (heavy breathing, slow mo action). My only other complaint is the stupidity of the police and the lack of role given to the brilliant Kou Shibasaki. Highly recommended. A pity it was not released worldwide. Do watch the TV version, Galileo. More lighthearted but really clever how the crimes are committed and then solved.For a fuller review, do check my review at my site, www.point2e.com under the Movies section.

8thSin '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.