The potential, oh the potential.
Essentially Anh Hung Tran, responsible for direction and the screenplay, did almost everything wrong you can do when you adapt a written work for the silver screen: The actors are good, the soundtrack is good (except for few moments of forced teary-eyes or mood-setting) and the sets are really good. So where does this go oh-so wrong? In the direction and screenplay. Almost every moment that defines the vibrant and corporeal characters of the book is not shown, skipped by or thrown at you in such a soulless way that either parts of characters are over-emphasized (Nagasawa being a jerk and a playboy, Watanabe talking weird) and the viewer can never build a connection to any of the characters. In a work that's character-driven, that's bad. What's worse is trying to make it plot-driven, leaving in every single sex scene but removing their meanings, too. What's horrible is the attempt to leave in bits and pieces of the characterization in a way that renders every character two-dimensional and as a soulless and mindless husk. I've seen 2D movies with more three-dimensional characters than this horrible attempt.
Don't waste your time or money. Give a hook, read the book.
Essentially Anh Hung Tran, responsible for direction and the screenplay, did almost everything wrong you can do when you adapt a written work for the silver screen: The actors are good, the soundtrack is good (except for few moments of forced teary-eyes or mood-setting) and the sets are really good. So where does this go oh-so wrong? In the direction and screenplay. Almost every moment that defines the vibrant and corporeal characters of the book is not shown, skipped by or thrown at you in such a soulless way that either parts of characters are over-emphasized (Nagasawa being a jerk and a playboy, Watanabe talking weird) and the viewer can never build a connection to any of the characters. In a work that's character-driven, that's bad. What's worse is trying to make it plot-driven, leaving in every single sex scene but removing their meanings, too. What's horrible is the attempt to leave in bits and pieces of the characterization in a way that renders every character two-dimensional and as a soulless and mindless husk. I've seen 2D movies with more three-dimensional characters than this horrible attempt.
Don't waste your time or money. Give a hook, read the book.