Now it’s official: Takashi Miike is a freak. The first half a minute of Ace Attorney is like getting smacked harshly in the cerebrum with a salmon that had been soaked in absinth and badger blood. However, it gets more relaxed from here on out but considering it is a distinctly bizarre interpretation of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, overseen by the same director who made Ichi the Killer and Audition; this was never going to be an easy one.
In this universe, there are so many crimes being committed every day that Japanese legal system has resorted to bench trials which means you get three days of two lawyers fighting against each other and then at the end, a verdict gets sprayed out like hot soy. All of this is done in the most aggressive theatrical way possible and in real life scenarios presented in Ace Attorney games, you can immerse yourself deeply into those cases. This would be what law looks like if you tried explaining it to a fax machine and then fed that fax machine into an AI suffering from multiple personality disorder or something similar; it seems like law but plays out as if sixteen screaming matches were occurring all at once.
The surreal opening of the film has been dispensed with and we are into the proceedings – court proceedings that is. “Court stuff” is pretty much what Phoenix Wright does best – aside from being terrible at it. Even though he strives hard for good results while presenting his case poorly. Hiroki Narimiya as Ace represents a well-meaning but dim-witted rookie whose efforts in court are quickly contrasted with the smooth-talking, slightly sexualised style favoured by Miles Edgeworth (Takumi Saito). At some point however everything starts hitting fans typically located around butt area which marks when Ace Attorney really takes off.
Ace Attorney boasts some excellent characters because they come straight from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney illustrated through Miike’s wonderful, weird, violent and beautifully dumb strokes. This fact is quite bewildering yet enlightening when you witness Larry Butz tearfully jumping around or watch Dick Gumshoe sincerely step things up. Moments like these show how it takes a crazy auteur like Miike to fully convey just how bizarre a game about being a lawyer in a corrupt technicolor video game version of Japan should feel.
The cases in the movie are actually quite deep for those who have played Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. There is something unreal about this film and it all hangs together via an extremely engaging and delightfully confusing maze of deception, proof, and arguments galore. And the hair too. That beautiful shining flawless hair.
Phoenix’s hair is perfect; I mean you could bounce a quarter off it without getting more than slightly on its nerves. In addition, Miike has perfectly captured some of the outstanding, iconic moments from the games such as Wright’s famous “objection!” that will make you snort milk out your nose the first time you see it. During one of these recesses in the midst of one case though, Wright wanders around picking up random pieces of evidence stating what each one is before standing there grinning foolishly at nothing in particular making people want to vomit dairy products everywhere. Such instances as these abound in this film which suggests that self-consciousness can be so charming as to help create an Ace Attorney movie.
The ultimate enjoyment of Ace Attorney would depend on how people can tolerate over two hours of cretinous, deadpan, wig-wearing idiots out to get our hero while it’s clearly obvious even to the dullest among us that their arguments have holes all over or see them making cruel glances at their truly guilty clients. It is a legal thriller and also a perfect game adaptation through its explosive, high-camp melodrama. Miike usually makes faster, harder, more visceral films so this courtroom drama – which runs for over two hours – does not always hit the target but when it does it’s just so squee.
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