Yonguija X

Unfortunately, I can't help comparing this to the Japanese version, or even the book. Where the Japanese film made a point, even raised issues of social and philosophical themes, this version falls short. In Japan we have a brilliant physicist, Yukawa, who is the antagonist to a brilliant mathematician whom he respects immensely. Here we only have high school friends; and instead of a battle of wits, we have a battle between intellect and intuition. Unfortunately, for me that absolutely wasn’t enough; for how brilliant the "bad guy" was, I found his policeman counterpart to be completely insufficient to the task. Overall, I found it weaker, too hysterical, and the screenwriter was trying too hard to inject "mutual love" – he made the teacher into someone attractive. It's a shame, because in doing so it lost the depth and, in the end, the profundity of his sacrifice. Unfortunately, I found this version weaker than the Japanese version and much weaker than the book. If you've seen this film, I definitely recommend reading the source material, it was published in English as Devotion of Suspect X. There the math teacher gets a new dimension and most importantly there will be the character of Galileo. However, I have to admit that I liked the ending better here, as the woman can wallow in remorse and the teacher can contentedly calculate the example, because things more or less worked out for him. A weaker 3 stars. There are definitely better detective stories being made in Korea. (19/08/2014)