SYNOPSIS:
A man arrives in the city upon news of a potential terrorist
strike in Italy. He is Japanese foreign diplomat, Kosaku Kuroda
(Yuji Oda), and he’s here under orders of his supervisor
at the Foreign Ministry, Hiroshi Kataoka (Kiichi Nakai), to
aid in the safeguarding of Japanese citizens. Kuroda’s
main contacts at the Japanese embassy consist of Ambassador
Kikuhara (Akira Onodera), Counselor Nishino (Shiro Sano),
and fellow diplomatic envoys Haba (Nene Ohtsuka) and Tanimoto
(Atsushi Ito). All are busy preparing for the visit of Japanese
Foreign Minister Kawagoe (Mitsuru Hirata) due to arrive for
the high-profile G8 foreign minister’s meeting. Meanwhile,
somewhere on the festively-lit streets of the city, a young
Japanese girl has suddenly gone missing. Is it an abduction
simply for ransom? Or could it be a prelude to terror?
MOVIE REVIEW:
Amalfi or Amalfi: Rewards of the Goddess (translated from its full Japanese title) was a movie that Fuji Tv made to celebrate their 50th anniversary. Forking out big bucks to commentrate this anniversary, they brought a star-studded cast over to Italy to film a kidnap cum political thriller.
This thriller headed to a good start with the introduction of Mr Kuroda (Yuji Oda), whose capabilities indicated that he is not your normal foreign diplomat. His keen sense of observation impressed and disrupted the Counsellor’s laborious planning for the G8 foreign minster’s meeting. In order to get him out of the way, the Counselor dispatch him to assist a Japanese lady (Yuju Amami) with her missing daughter. A simple translator job soon turned into a full blown kidnap investigation case as Mr Kuroda became directly involved with the case. Together, their rescue mission took around Italy tourist spots and not forgetting Amalfi, a picturesque coastal town of Italy.
This kidnap thriller invokes memories of Jodie Foster’s Flightplan in which a mom’s frantic search for her missing daughter had caused a rift in the bigger scheme of things to come. Like Flightplan, the initial setup was intriguing enough to garner the interest to follow the chain of events but the revelation at the end was a major disappointment. It's one of those schemes where 101 things could have gone wrong but was made workable due to movie magic and that where Amalfi faltered badly.
But then again, even though the meticulously crafted thriller failed badly at the revelation, this movie is still supported by the star-studded cast and the exotic location. This other two elements were adequate enough to make watching this movie enjoyable.
Yuji Oda, the leading star in the Bayside Shakedown franchise, had aged considerably since Bayside Shakedown. He still carries that sense of charisma with him in Amalfi that made him believable as a cool problem solving “covert” agent that disguised as a diplomat. Yuki Amami, the damsel in distress was last seen in Kaiji, brought forth a sense of beautiful frailty for a worried mom.
Meanwhile Erika Toda, the blundering assistant - who serves as comic relief and eye candy, played Misa in the Death Note franchise. Last but not least, Koichi Sato, Atsushi Ito and Masaharu Fukuyama, well known for Nobody to Watch Over me, Train man (the tv series) and Suspect X respectively, made their appearance in this grand movie outing for Fuji TV.
Beside the stars, the location of this film was definitely a selling point. The houses built on the dramatic cliffs and beautiful coastal scenery of Amalfi were beautifully captured. Even some of the tourist locations were worked into the script so that viewers could enjoy the views while protagonists were busy rescuing the little girl. At some points of the film, the beautiful sights made one wish that they forget the girl and just soak in the sights instead.
Watch Amalfi for the exotic location and the Japanese stars if you are a fan who follows Japanese movies closely. The thriller aspect had a good start but floundered at its revelation. It is ironical to note that while many popular Japanese TV series branch out with a movie event as a finale “celebration”, Amalfi was not based on any TV series at all (from the best of my knowledge and research). It is even more ironical to note that as a part of a Japanese television corporation anniversary celebration, Amalfi was not shown on television first. However if you missed this in the cinema, it ain’t that bad to borrow this dvd for a spin.
SPECIAL FEATURES :
NIL
AUDIO/VISUAL:
Amalfi is filled with picturesque scenery and soundtracks that played a variation of the popular Italian song “Con te partirò” (or better known as Time to Say Goodbye). The various sights and sounds such as Sarah Brightman's performance and the tourist locations were adequately presented on this DVD.
MOVIE RATING:
DVD
RATING :
Review
by Richard Lim Jr
Posted on 23 March 2010
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