"The Devotion of Suspect X" (2017 release from China; 112 min.) brings the story of a murder case set in the Jianbei district of Shijiazhuang, in northern China. As the movie opens, we get to know a math genius who teachers at a junior high school. In a parallel story, a body is found of a 40-ish guy. The Jianbei police gets on the case and quickly narrows down the list of suspects, including the murdered guy's ex-wife. By chance, the neighbor of he ex-wife is an acquaintance of the police officer in charge of the case. At this point we are 15 min, into the movie but to tell you more of the plot would spoil your viewing experience.
Couple of comments: this is a remake of the Japanese movie based on the Japanese book of the same name, this time transposed into a Chinese setting. This is the second movie directed by well-known actor Alec Su. Purposefully I wasn't too aware of the movie's plot details, and I walked in the theater expecting an action movie of some sort. Major miscalculation on my part. It turns out this is a low production movie with incredibly awkward and stilted performances, something one might see in TV movies and even soaps. In fact, on 3 or 4 instances, the music swells as the "drama" rises, only to then fade out to a black screen, as if we were going to a TV commercial. Furthermore, the movie switches from a whodunnit movie to a "will the cops catch the murderer" movie midway in the film, as what happened to the murdered guy is revealed halfway through. In all, I felt incredibly disappointed by this film on so many levels.
"The Devotion of Suspect X" opened two weekends ago on a single screen for all of Greater Cincinnati. The Friday early evening screening where I saw this at was attended quite nicely. I should add that I was the only non-Chinese/American-Chinese in the audience. Not that it matters, as the entire audience was laughing and hollering in disbelief during the most cringe-inducing moments of the movie. I love foreign films of all sorts, but in good consciousness, there is no way I can recommend this film to anyone. Viewer beware!
