ACE ATTORNEY - MIFF 2012

Every year at MIFF I seem to end up seeing a number of new films from Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike, and I seem to keep saying the same things, that the films are overlong, or immature, or that he just needed to pull back a little.  “Ace Attorney” is the first of two Miike films that I am seeing at MIFF this year and is actually based on a popular video game that I am unfamiliar with.  Hearing of the film’s origins I was expecting another one of Takashi Miike’s silly over the top films that I struggle to respond to (I much prefer his more serious and darker works), and to a point this is what I got, however the murder mystery / courtroom drama actually had a little more going for it than I was expecting.

The film is about a novice lawyer, Phoenix Wright, who goes up against the infamous prosecutor, Manfred Von Karma, who is known for having a perfect record in his forty year career, he has never lost a case.  Wright is defending his childhood friend Miles Edgeworth, who is a famous lawyer himself, against a charge of murder.  He is being accused of killing the man responsible for his father’s death years earlier, but the more Phoenix digs into the case, he realizes that it is related to two other cases, one that he just recently won against Miles which dealt with the murder of Phoenix’s mentor, Mia Fey, and the other an old case that Von Karma himself prosecuted many, many years ago.

Due to the large amount of crime that is committed in the future, the criminal system must work at a quicker rate to get through as many cases as they can.  Because of this, each case is given a majority of three days where lawyers on each side battle each other with evidence and truth, until the judge gives a verdict.  

I was right in expecting silliness in regards to this film, but it is actually a lot of fun for the most part.  Like the majority of Miike’s films, it does outstay its welcome, and is at least a half an hour too long, but for the majority of its running time it is pretty entertaining.  The court room battles are quite funny and imaginatively staged, with big holographic images appearing with the evidence on them above the lawyers.  A funny sight gag is when we see a case from the past where technology isn’t as advanced and thus evidence shows up on a giant television screen hanging from the roof.  I actually really liked the character of Phoenix Wright, he is a bumbling fool and knows little about what he is doing, but he has a big heart and he is very funny.  Hiroki Narimiya gives an excellent performance as Phoenix, rounding out his character with enough stupidity and charm, without going too over the top.  However his childhood friend and the man he is defending, Miles, is as dull as dishwater and this is due to the equally dull performance by Takumi Saito in the role.

To be truthful, while I found the murder mystery to be entertaining, it got so convoluted that at times I got lost in the plot.  The sillier it got the more I started to lose interest, which no doubt led to my confusion.  By biggest gripe with Takashi Miike is that his imagination is too grand and that he tries to cram too much into his films which actually does the film a disservice.  Sometimes less is more, and if he had streamlined “Ace Attorney” more, I’m sure that it would’ve been a better movie.  At the same time, he has to please the fans of the video game, so he may have been bound to include certain elements of the game in the film.

A lot of the comedy is of the ridiculous nature, which I do not respond well to usually, but there were a couple of gags that really made me laugh.  The first had to do with a brief subplot regarding a loch ness monster type creature spotted in a nearby lake.  The actual reveal of what happened is very funny.  The other moment I loved was so weird, it truly was a WTF moment.  It was near the end when the police mascot stops the judge making a final decision.  It is hilarious but makes no sense at all.

Overall, I enjoyed the majority of “Ace Attorney”, although I felt it was far too long and got too convoluted for its own good.  Visually it was very impressive and for the most part it was quite funny too.  Still at the end of the day, the villain of the piece was very obvious.  Although it is not my kind of film, Takashi Miike has done a fair job with the material he has been given.

3 Stars.