Story of the Detective (1983)
19 year old Hiroko and Yusaku Matsuda in a romantic 80’s detective story. A sure winner you might think. Unfortunately it isn’t. Hiroko’s performance, while not bad, is probably the least impressive I’ve seen from her so far and miles from her work in Tonda Couple and Sailor-fuku. Yusaku Matsuda fares pretty well as a middle aged detective who becomes Hiroko’s love interest. Still, it’s almost weird to see him playing such a serene role, just four years after his mad and wonderfully gritty performance in Toru Murakawa’s masterpiece Resurrection of Golden Wolf. But despite the critisism the actors play together well. The story kinda works but is mostly an excuse for the character drama. Hiroko’s theme song at the end is a pretty decent one. Aside the good actors there isn’t too much to set this film appart from any average suspense story.
The IVL dvd is the way to go. The original Kadokawa release was a dvd-5 as well so you’re not losing much. English subtitles had slightly better timings that I expected from a IVL Kadokawa release (still far from my own fansub standards) and the image looks pretty decent overall. It suffers from softness but I could fix that with a little adjustment. As usual the original trailer for the main feature is included. Menus spoil Hiroko’s theme song so I advice to skip them before seeing the film.
