Diagonaldi Very well executed

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

WILLIAM FLANIGAN Viewed on DVD. This is a way over par suspense film! Acting is riveting and due entirely to the remarkable performances delivered by the three stunning female lead actresses. The supporting cast (which is huge if you count all the cameos) is also quite good. Film direction is superb and strictly about generating edge-of-your-seat excitement. All stops seem to have been pulled out by the director to ensure the viewer never becomes complacent or comfortable. The pace of roughly the first half of the film is especially dynamic: when characters indicate their intention is to go somewhere, the film immediately cuts to that scene. Much of the second half includes various flavors of flashbacks mostly from the perspective of the lead actresses. Most occur on the edge of a cliff with the ever present threat of yet another over-the-cliff murder! The male protagonist is shown/confirmed to have lead two lives (perhaps with the help of his family members). What has been written off (by the police) as a suicide was really a murder; what was heretofore been considered a murder was a suicide; what was considered to be a suicide or murder may have been just an accident. Original source material exhibits a few artifacts of wear. Black and white cinematography (wide screen) is a bit on the dark side. Score is fine. Subtitles are just right (with a minimum of translational embellishment). WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.

Prof-Hieronymos-Grost Teiko Uhara is a dowdy young woman delighted at finally catching the man of her dreams, Kenichi, after a whirlwind romance her and her new man marry. As Kenichi has just received another big promotion in work, he is called away immediately before they can have a proper honeymoon, he promises to be back in a few days. The days pass and there is no sign of her husband returning, Teiko contacts her husbands employers, who say he has already left for home some time previously. Teiko begins to worry for her husbands safety and decides to travel north to Kanazawa to track him down.Zero Focus is very taut thriller, that just screams of Hitchcock, the plot, the noirish visuals and even the score would all be very much at home in Hitch's repertoire. Nomura pieces together a convoluted script into a mesmerizing tale of hidden identities, murder and prostitution from which Teiko cannot escape. With only a couple of photos from her husbands belongings to go on, Teiko's investigation takes her into the snowy wastelands of the north, a slightly backward coastal area where ragged cliffs act like a magnet to those with suicidal tendencies and provide the viewer with memories of Rebecca. Its into this that quiet city girl Teiko is thrown, with these paltry clues she endeavours to unravel the tragedies of Kanazawa.

crossbow0106 This is a taut mystery about a newlywed couple where the husband disappears on a last business trip. His wife Teiko tries to retrace his steps by traveling to northern Japan to find him. Along the way, she finds out things about him that surprise her, but also make her realize how little she knows him (they were only married one week before he disappeared). The plot thickens over time and you find out little revelations along the way. I found this movie to be very well put together, it doesn't bore you. The acting is uniformly good and the best thing is that it is in black and white. That actually enhances the film, especially as the little twists in the story unfold. If you're a fan of mystery/film noir, you'll like this.

adverts Zero Focus plays like a bit like a semi-documentary police procedural and a bit like Rashomon. It's fast moving and seems to be well acted (sometimes it's hard to tell when the language spoken is not your native tongue). It's filled with twists and turns and should please some mystery fans. Keep in mind it is not a "thriller" - certainly not in the 2005 Blockbuster bid budget sense of the word.**SPOILER** The odd thing about the film is that you are aware that the husband is dead in the first half of the film -- and you are never led to believe that he MAY be alive (in fact, he isn't). The main thrust of the second half is finding out why/how he died (and how his brother died). Unfortunately, by the end, I didn't care. Why? Perhaps not enough character development -- I didn't feel I "knew" or really liked the characters, so I didn't care what happened to them.