LUPIN THE THIRD (2014)

Genre: Action/Adventure
Director: Ryuhei Kitamura
Cast: Shun Oguri, Meisa Kuroki, Tetsuji Tamayama, Gō Ayano, Tadanobu Asano, Jerry Yan, Kim Joon, Thanayong Wongtrakul
RunTime: 2 hrs 13 mins
Rating: PG13 (Some Violence)
Released By: GV and Encore Films
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 25 September 2014

Synopsis: Considered the world's greatest thief, Lupin III travels the globe, stealing priceless objects and announcing his intentions via calling card before pulling off the heist. Joining him are expert marksman and Lupin right-hand man Daisuke Jige, master swordsman Goemon Ishikawa XIII who is said to possess a sword and skills that can cut anything, and femme fatale Fujiko Mine who is a fellow thief and also Lupin’s love interest. Pursuing them across the globe is Inspector Koichi Zenigata, who has made it his life mission to catch the master thief. Will Lupin III succeed the legacy of his grandfather? How will he infiltrate a massive security fortress to steal the world’s most precious jewellery?

Movie Review:

“Har? Since when did Singapore have ‘Hougang Museum of the Arts’???”

That’s only the first of the many ‘unheard-of’s in this movie, Lupin The Third. The movie opens with the group of thieves (including Lupin III) competing to steal one of the most prized medals housed in the Hougang Museum of the Arts. They are a group of elite thieves known as The Works which is masterminded by a greying old man. As he plans for his step down and succession, it led to the unraveling of long-kept and dark secret behind ‘Crimson Heart of Cleopatra’, a priceless ancient treasure. A twist of events sets both Lupin III (Shun Oguri) and Michael Lee (Jerry Yan) on an adventure to steal the treasure from the most guarded place on earth.

Other than having Singapore as one of the backdrops of the thieves’ mission, the film was also filmed in Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand and the Philippines. In fact, the crew and the cast spent almost two months in Thailand for the purpose of filming. The movie also had a multi-national cast, including familiar faces such as Jerry Yan and Kim Joon, which is quite a pleasant surprise.  The movie also boasted a total of 4 years of time spent on both the beginning to post production, with script development taking up 2.5 years. Well, this is rather understandable because although the movie is primarily helmed by the Japanese production team, almost half of the dialogues are non-Japanese. Which leads us to a mind boggle – why go and make things so complicated?

It seems like the only probable explanation to that is to appeal to a wider international audience. However, that attempt was weak and not-that-successful as there were really many strange English dialogues, weird conversations. They were so awkward that you simply cringe and squirm in your seat, and you would even feel slightly embarrassed for the cast. There’s also some amount of Chinese and Korean, just for the records.

One would expect that maybe another aspect of the film can compensate, such as the action. -But sadly, that didn’t work out too well also. The movie was heavy on action, and had quite a generous budget, with lots of explosion and CGI to ‘complement’ the action. However, they were mostly unremarkable with the exception of the car chasing sequence, which was particularly awful to watch. The action scenes were old-fashioned and sloppy, like those you would see in a 1970-80s film. The intended comedy was also a little exaggerated and counter-logic. While that is probably accepted in the manga or animation, the same could not be used in a live-action adaptation as it loses contradicts too much with reality.

It’s a true pity that even though the movie managed to rope in many actors such as Shun Oguri, who actually did quite a good rendition of Lupin III, the film didn’t work out to be a memorable one. The film seem to only carry the brand name of ‘Lupin III’, being boasted as one of the most popular and well-liked manga. Even if the sole motive of the movie is to entertain, it’s only a B-grade among the lot. 

Movie Rating:

(Excruciating is how you would describe the experience of being put through 133-minute worth of haphazardness and inconsistencies)

Review by Tho Shu Ling