Review | A Man movie review: Japanese mystery novel adaptation is polished but hardly riveting, with Sakura Ando and Satoshi Tsumabuki pondering lies and morality
- Kei Ishikawa’s film follows a lawyer asked to do a background check on the late husband of an ex-client, after it turns out the man wasn’t who he claimed to be
- But there’s a lack of urgency as the story unfolds, leaving one feeling that the book on which it’s based would be more gratifying than this languid adaptation
3/5 stars
As he did in 2016’s Traces of Sin, director Kei Ishikawa tasks leading man Satoshi Tsumabuki with reopening a cold case in his new thriller A Man.
In Traces of Sin, Tsumabuki played an investigative reporter who immerses himself in an abandoned murder investigation. This time he plays Kido, a lawyer hired by a former client Rei (Sakura Ando) to do a background check on her late husband (Masataka Kubota) after it transpires that he was not the man he claimed to be.
Ishikawa’s measured direction of A Man keeps the thrills to a bare minimum, instead exploring the moral consequences of living a lie.
Tsumabuki’s probing protagonist doesn’t enter the fray until a good half an hour into the film, by which time Rei is positioned squarely as the film’s heroine.
Even before she meets the ill-fated Daisuke (Kubota), Rei has been put through the emotional wringer. Her younger son died when he was two, and so she dotes upon her elder son, Yuto (Aito Sakamoto). The tragedy took its toll on her marriage, and her husband is no longer in the picture.
