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I just watched a movie called Suspect X. It is an adaptation of a book called The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino (which I am also planning to read in the future).

I don’t even remember how I came across this movie other than I think someone recommended it to me (possibly Amazon or Netflix?). Unfortunately, Netflix has it listed but DVD availability is ‘Unknown’ which usually means, ‘Never’.

In short, the movie is a detective thriller but it offers a very unique take on the normal crime genre. Rather than keep the audience in suspense about ‘who done it’, the crime that is the subject of the mystery is shown in detail at the beginning of the film (well in the second scene really) and the audience follows both the ‘criminals’ and the police as the investigation unfolds.

It hardly has to be said that for the story to remain interesting, more would have to be revealed as things progress and that is definitely the case here. By the end of the movie, there have been several crafty and surprising turns that I did not see coming and found very enjoyable.

On a surprising note, the film has a very interesting balance of a grim crime story, and fairly entertaining and quirky characters. The first third of the movie, in particular, has some fun and light moments as the police investigators are introduced.

The protagonist and antagonist of the movie are, respectively, a physicist and a mathematician. This makes for a very interesting play between two highly intelligent people. It also allows the story to move beyond simple good vs. bad characterizations and as the details of the story unfold, you find yourself really questioning exactly who the ‘bad guy’ is and whether there really is one at all.

You can see the trailer for the movie here.

The movie held my attention from the first moments, which you can watch below (unfortunately the video quality on this clip is not so great…).

So, now the problems:

Yes, it is a Japanese movie and is not available with English audio. I prefer it that way, English dubbing always seems weird to me. I much prefer subtitles.

Also, the only sources I can find for this movie are not what you would call ‘legitimate’. At best, you can buy a DVD of it on Amazon for about $15 but it appears to be a bit shady. The seller seems pretty legit but the source of the DVD is almost certainly a pirate organization of some flavor. From what I can see, the company in question is pretty well known to sell burned copies of movies with amateur looking covers and poor quality products all around.

That is a sad thing since this really is an excellent movie and should be for sale in the US in a way that would put some money back in the original creators’ hands.

As a final tidbit, I found after watching, that the movie is actually a kind of sequel to a Japanese TV series called Galileo (one of the main characters being called Professor Galileo). Now I am looking for a good way to get a hold of that.