Amalfi

Rating: 7.0/10

Genre: Suspense

Overall value for money and time: 7.6/10

This movie has got to be one of the difficult posters to find online. It's not much of a surprise though, given its low publicity and it being a foreign film. It has the backing of a grandeur set and cinematography, but what I think what it lacks is the publicity and a poor call on its release date - would have turned out to be quite a hit if they included "From the director who brought you Suspect X" in its poster and if it was released on Christmas Eve.

Set in a city in Italy, Amalfi, a Japanese diplomat has just arrived at the Japanese Embassy and is new on the job. However, he's not your everyday diplomat, he later turned out to be an undercover elite (I have no idea where he's really from and where he actually works). Bottomline is, his mission is to ensure the safety of Japan's foreign minister who would be arriving in the city for a meeting in a few days time. However, his mission was compromised when he got himself involved in an unexpected kidnapping of a young girl. All of these was hypothetically supposed to happen on Christmas this year, 2009.

This is a fairly all-rounded movie; it has a suspense-filled plot, a good cast, wonderful cinematography (though it wasn't so much until the later part of the movie) and has a fairly seat-gripping story development. It felt slightly more superior than most suspense japanese thrillers I've caught and I was pleasantly surprised with the ending. It did also leave me, when the credits rolled, a new resolution to make it one of my sightseeing holiday spots in future.

One complain I have about the movie though is the 2 prominent blackout cut scenes which made it seem as if the reel had ended abruptly, either that or the reeler was sleeping on the job. Still, the film was a success and the success of it was hugely owing to the set, but don't get me wrong, everything else wasn't bad, just mediocre, and best still, there's special guest Sarah Brightman at the end!!