Nov 25th 7:30PM

It’s unquestionably the greatest film adaptation of a video game of all time… which seems impossible, but that’s what happens when a movie based upon a visual novel depicting law & order is helmed by the director of Ichi the Killer & Audition.

Turning a novel into a movie has been a challenge for countless filmmakers, but adapting a video game into a motion picture has resulted in outright disasters. There are so many examples to point and laugh at, so the very idea of a good cinematic adaptation of a game seems inconceivable. Well, enter Takashi Miike. Yes, THAT Takashi Miike. The director of Ichi the Killer, Audition, and Visitor Q. Also, Gyakuten Saiban, or Ace Attorney in the West.

Based upon Capcom’s law & order simulator, the first visual novel to make a serious impact on the west, Miike’s extremely literal translation of the events depicted in the first installment on the DS (Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney in the West) would perhaps be frowned upon, if not for the creative liberties taken by the aforementioned prior efforts. Whereas other filmmakers feel that in-game elements in real life would make little sense or be too silly, Miike makes them work, with the most immediate example being the wacky hairstyles (which may or may not have also been a nod to the Farrelly Brothers’ Kingpin).

The bar for video game cinema is sadly fairly low, so saying that Ace Attorney is by far the greatest adaptation that has ever been produced might seem like faint praise, but seriously, this is a damn fine movie; it’s a master class example of how to do it right, but also the perfect example of a director who has total respect and confidence in the subject matter, which even the most ardent defenders of Super Mario Bros: The Movie cannot say.

“The Speed Racer of courtroom dramas. Hard to believe any filmmaker in the world has more fun than Takashi Miike.” - someone on Letterboxd