Brief Story Line
Madarame Baku (Yokohama Ryusei - Your Turn to Kill TV series, The Journalist etc) was a gambler who could always tell when his opponent was cheating or lie. Hence he was also referred to as the lie eater (Usogui). Baku previously was part of the gambling organization called Kakero and now he tried to take the leader out one by one by challenging other gamblers.
Baku later befriended with a young man named Kaji (Sano Hayato - Tokyo MER TV series, Blue Summer etc) who became his protégé. But trying to defeat Kakero was not an easy task, and Baku was fortunate to get the support from owner of illegal gambling casino, Kurama Ranko (Shiraishi Mai - Stolen Identity, The Drifter TV series etc).
So how would the story conclude? You can find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
As I said above, I was intrigued by the premise of this movie which reminded me a bit of the past hits from Hong Kong, the God of Gamblers movies and also a bit of the Kaiji trilogy and its Chinese adaptation Animal World. But the significant difference was the main capability of Baku was his ability to spot the way his opponent cheat. It even felt like solving a crime by showing us how it was done. This was definitely the main attraction for me as it was fun and pretty entertaining.
Another point that I like in here was the suspense of seeing how Baku and Kaji were almost always in tight spots during their gamble. In this almost 2 hours movie, there were plenty of gambling done which were not too complicated and easy enough to understand. It was only the stake that was put very high as they also gamble with the lives of the players. This also made it more suspenseful.
Oh and if you have seen enough of Japanese movies and series, you could almost always feel or identify if they were based on manga. And this was one that I immediately feel after few minutes into the film. Due to being a manga adaptation, I could understand how the characters sometime act a bit comical. However, to my personal opinion, this was one that was not too extreme. Only few times that the behaviour were typical in a manga.
Yokohama Ryusei, the actor playing Baku/Usogui is quite popular as he has played in several movies and series in the past few years. I thought his characterization (or at least his appearance) looked a lot like Baku in the manga. Meanwhile Sano Hayato seemed suitable as the young guy taken under Baku's wing and Shiraishi Mai was also convincing as the sometimes gullible Kurama. In addition to them, there were few other support characters. The one who really caught my attention was definitely the very cool Sadakuni Ikki (played wonderfully by Miura Shohei - Daytime Shooting Star etc). Others were so so and personally even a bit over acting though it might have been the way the character was written , particularly the referee Mekama (no offense Hongo Kanata).
The story itself was not too complex and the characters introduction were done smoothly. And the ending was pretty satisfying. Knowing it to be manga adaptation, I could also understand why it ended that way. We will see if there would be sequel to this movie in future, but I certainly would hope so. It should not be too difficult anyway, cause the manga which was illustrated by Toshio Sako has been concluded in 2017. The movie itself was directed by Nakata Hideo (famous for directing Ring, Ring 2 and their US adaptation and other movies).
Overall to me this was an entertaining enough movie with easy plot to understand and various suspenseful games that kept us intrigued till the revealing of how the cheat was done. Those who like this sort of movie should be able to enjoy it like I did. So if you want to experience it or if you have read the manga, then chances are you would like this. But if you have never read about it and you decide to watch this, just remember, it is a manga adaptation.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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