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The Mystery of Rampo
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by Hallmark
Sales Rank: 30275
Price: $19.98
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This is one of the most subtle Japanese contemporary films you'll find. Despite being a live action drama, it starts with an impressive and densely symbolic animation sequence that quickly establishes the pace of the fantastic story of real-life writer Edogawa Rampo struggling with well, you'd better find out yourselves. <br /> <br />I think anyone interested in Japanese stylists like Kurosawa, Ichikawa Kon or Mizoguchi should see Rampo. I gave this film only 4 stars because of the transfer to DVD. I saw an older VHS edition the first time, then I bought the MGM DVD, and I was surprised to find the quality of both editions is pretty much the same. Which is really a downside for a movie with the amazing score Rampo has. <br /> <br />Anyway, I strongly recommend this movie to anyone interested in good filmmaking.
Viewer Reviews
The Mystery of Rampo (Rintaro Mayuzumi and Kazuyoshi Okuyama, 1994)
Rampo Edogawa was a fine purveyor of mystery stories. (I strongly suggest checking out Rampo Noir, if you've not seen it yet, based on his work.) Okuyama and Yuhei Enoki had an idea-- not a terribly original one, but a good one nonetheless-- what if one of Edogawa's stories actually started coming true? Because Edogawa was a crime writer, you've basically got a hardboiled mystery already set up, and you get Rampo himself as the detective. What could possibly go wrong? Not a great deal, as it turns out (viz. Jarmusch's brilliant Hammett for another example of this odd subgenre); as long as your direction is competent and you get good enough actors, it's almost a guaranteed home run. And while it's not perfect, The Mystery of Rampo is at least a solid double that gets at least one runner across the plate.
We open with Edogawa (The Great Yokai War's Naoto Takenaka) at his publisher's office, being told that his most recent work has been censored by the government. Edogawa is rightly incensed at this, but through a series of coincidences, he finds out the reason-- murders exactly like those depicted in his story have actually been occurring. Edogawa figures he can solve the mystery by acting out his own story, so he asks himself the obvious question: what would Kogoro Akechi do? Akechi (The Bird People in China's Masahiro Motoki) is Edogawa's longtime hero, a smooth-operating detective who always knows just the right ting to do in any situation. Edogawa, unfortunately, is not Akechi, and he spends more time bumbling around in the dark than solving mysteries. He also finds himself drawn to Shizuko (former supermodel Michiko Hada, recently of Infection), who's the bad guy in the story. But in the real events, is she really the bad guy?
While I've come across recent Asian films that have been just as awful as their Hollywood counterparts, I still believe that in general, the output of the Asian film industry, be it in Honk Kong, Tokyo, Bollywood, or what have you, is of a higher quality than Hollywood is able to achieve these days. The Mystery of Rampo adds another arrow to that quiver; whereas a movie like this under the aegis of Hollywood would be all about the action and the mystery angle, The Mystery of Rampo proceeds at is own sedate pace, letting us get to know these characters through watching them interact rather than through cues we're already supposed to understand from having watched a thousand other movies of the same type. As long as Asia keeps that up, they'll kick our butts most of the time. This is not to say the movie is devoid of either action (which is used judiciously) or mystery (which is used in spades). A strong effort that requires a great deal of thought and attention on the part of the viewer, who will be rewarded by an evening-- or a week-- at the local coffeehouse debating the ending with compatriots. *** ½
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