Robin N 5:55 pm on March 30, 2017
Tags: Devotion of Suspect X, Wang Kai ( 4 )

Wang Kai’s movie opening

Those of us in the US and Canada have a chance to see it starting tomorrow (3/31) but I’m not sure when it opens in Hong Kong. Theater information at China Lion’s site here.

It’s by a well-known mystery writer Keigo Higashino – and it’s been adapted before in Japan and Korea (I’ve seen neither but I’ll add the trailers after the jump for a little visual comparison). I’ve read other works of the author’s and they’re generally twisty and a little dark, so I’m interested. If you are too, don’t hesitate because it will probably only have a 1 week run.

BTW, you might recognize his male costar as the creepy bad guy from Love Me If You Dare.

Compare the trailers for a comparative look!

#devotion-of-suspect-x, #wang-kai

yenchan69 8:41 am on March 31, 2017

IMDB says it opens today in China, but I don’t see it on any movie listings in HK, so go figure… The movie poster says April 1!
- Robin N 9:31 am on March 31, 2017
  
  I don’t think openings are equal in China – what opens on the mainland on one day won’t necessarily open in Hong Kong at that time, perhaps. The “My Egg Boy” movie I saw opened in Taiwan and mainland China last September but will play in Hong Kong next month, if I remember the timing correctly from the Director’s explanation. You’ll have to keep your eyes peeled for it.
chingu123 9:28 am on March 31, 2017

if it’s only here for a week I might have to miss it but it looks very interesting indeed. Thanks for the heads up!
- Robin N 9:32 am on March 31, 2017
  
  Maybe it will be popular enough to be held over a second week?
Robin N 2:14 pm on April 3, 2017

Impressions – mini-review without spoilers:

If you like Wang Kai’s impressive posture and self-contained manner (very Prince Jing) you will find nothing to displease you in this movie! He’s smart and successful, of course, pretty much a genius, but a relatively self-deprecating one. At one point he talks about his current position as an adjunct professor with little hope of advancement – no connections – in spite of being a sought-after expert in his field. His manner of speech is fairly clipped, as if he’s being fed his lines, but I think that’s just his normal way of speaking – it’s a little choppy and makes him seem a little stodgy, but by the end of the movie he evolves into something a little more human and the final reveal (which I won’t discuss) is very effective.

The guy playing his counterpart is much more compelling from the beginning because he’s playing a very different character. He’s gray, depressed, hunched over with the day-to-day tedium of his lonely existence and his eyes only sparkle when he’s thinking of his female neighbor next door. That sounds like he’s playing true to form – once again the creepy guy we’ve seen before, but it’s not obviously the case. He just is charmed by the woman and her teenage daughter and their cheerful attempts to build a new life in the apartment next to his.

One thing I really appreciated in this movie – especially as it bugs me tremendously when it’s not practiced – is how well they cast the teenage student versions of Wang Kai and his fellow genius, particularly the latter! They look and feel exactly like junior versions of both actors and the characterizations are spot on. Too often you see ‘child’ versions of an actor or actress and they look nothing like their adult versions (and in the case of Stairway to Heaven I always felt that tween Park Shin-hye out-acted her adult version of SWMNBN – not to mention their not looking alike at all). With so many actors to choose from, how hard can it be to pick someone who both looks and behaves like the other?

In a way, the movie works well enough as a detective drama, but there are just a few storytelling shortcuts at the end that make or break it for you, depending on how you feel about the Sherlock Holmesian-type reveals. I won’t say that I was on the edge of my seat, but I enjoyed it well enough. Also, filmed in the Harbin area, the look and feel of the drama was interesting on its own merits.

BTW, I think there were a lot of “Jing-fei” in the audience because after the movie was over there was a cluster of young Chinese-Americans who sat in the theater and excitedly discussed (in Chinese) something – probably Wang Kai’s hotness 🙂