This movie desmonstrate how bad a loose adaptation of a long-running series can destroy its aura and its narrative richness. If you gave this movie a rate higher than 5, you clearly don't understand how a movie narrative functions.
Where to start? The original story was a clever and psychological plunge into the world of gambling. IT shows how Kaiji, a loser, could get himself out of dire situation with the brilliance of his mind and how he also could just get himself back into those same situation by mistake, greed or simple silliness. We are constantly in his mind seeing how he deconstructs each game and how he find solutions to beat it. We are laso in his heart with his failures, his desires for a normal life and his need for more sometimes that will lead to his downfall.
In this movie, we have none of this. It was pretty obvious from the start: the movie covers three big arcs in two hours. Kaiji is just a pretty bland guy who overeacts often. We don't get to understand why he's a loser and why he fell so low because the movie doesn't have the time for that. It's aggravated by the fact that each games are rushed and some crucial moments are omitted. Therefore, Kaiji easily brushs through them with no strategy or reflexion and in the end, he just ends up like a lucky guy, not the genius from the original manga. The final nail in the coffin is Fujiwara who doesn't look like the part (the original Kaiji is ugly which adds to his distress) and overacts as usual.
Subsequently, as previously mentionned, the rushed aspect of the movie just kills every arcs. The first arc was one of the most beloved of the original story. Here, it's covered in 20 minutes omitting key elements which renders it totally incoherent. Why would they shuffle their cards at the beginning of the game? In the original story, they did it at the end because most of the players had only one card and many knew what each others' cards were. There is no point in shuffling if most players have most of their cards. Why does Kaiji goes to the underground if he's got no card left? Only the old man had one but both go to jail. I could go on and on. The story is so dried up it ends up pointless.
I haven't seen the sequels but I'm not expecting much.
Where to start? The original story was a clever and psychological plunge into the world of gambling. IT shows how Kaiji, a loser, could get himself out of dire situation with the brilliance of his mind and how he also could just get himself back into those same situation by mistake, greed or simple silliness. We are constantly in his mind seeing how he deconstructs each game and how he find solutions to beat it. We are laso in his heart with his failures, his desires for a normal life and his need for more sometimes that will lead to his downfall.
In this movie, we have none of this. It was pretty obvious from the start: the movie covers three big arcs in two hours. Kaiji is just a pretty bland guy who overeacts often. We don't get to understand why he's a loser and why he fell so low because the movie doesn't have the time for that. It's aggravated by the fact that each games are rushed and some crucial moments are omitted. Therefore, Kaiji easily brushs through them with no strategy or reflexion and in the end, he just ends up like a lucky guy, not the genius from the original manga. The final nail in the coffin is Fujiwara who doesn't look like the part (the original Kaiji is ugly which adds to his distress) and overacts as usual.
Subsequently, as previously mentionned, the rushed aspect of the movie just kills every arcs. The first arc was one of the most beloved of the original story. Here, it's covered in 20 minutes omitting key elements which renders it totally incoherent. Why would they shuffle their cards at the beginning of the game? In the original story, they did it at the end because most of the players had only one card and many knew what each others' cards were. There is no point in shuffling if most players have most of their cards. Why does Kaiji goes to the underground if he's got no card left? Only the old man had one but both go to jail. I could go on and on. The story is so dried up it ends up pointless.
I haven't seen the sequels but I'm not expecting much.