MovieIQTest

I am amazed to see this messy slapstick farce would be appreciated greatly by many viewers and generously awarded it with high scores. Since when the Japanese metro police in Tokyo would become a boy-girl scout like juvenile summer camp? The police force in this ridiculous mess is divided into two age groups, incompetent grown-ups idiots and juvenile delinquent Z generation teenager thugs. A policeman would purposely show his road rage to block another car to pass and almost start a fist fight openly in the broad daylight Tokyo street with that driver? You can't be so naive to create such ridiculous scene just to give viewers an impression that this scenario and scene could certify itself as a comedy. All the older generation cops in this so-called dramedy should be retired yesterday, and those younger ones should be disqualified and banned from the police academy. By adapting manga novels into movies or drama series is why the Japanese movie industries has become a laughable joke.

This is one of the movies adapted from Robert B Parker's novels, their protagonist is Jesse Stone, an alcoholic cop at first stationed in L. A., then involved some unspeakable and mysterious scandal that never solved. He was later forced to quit, but miraculously hired by a small town to become its chief of police. Parker's most famous franchise novels are "Spenser for Hire" and "Jesse Stone", but unlike Jesse Stone, Spenser, a Private Detective, a tough guy who never indulged himself in alcohol or a loser. There is not too much to be praised on Stone. When he was rehired and reinstated as a cop, he was still a heavy drinker, holding glass of liquor more than holding his badge and gun, always in deep depression. Before Parker died in 2010, we could see clearly that he, as his second created main character, Jesse Stone, also was a heavy drinker, albeit an alcoholic. His lifelong publisher had been loyally publishing both of his "Spenser" and "Stone" short novels which usually with very thin storyline and plots, to transform them into over 300 pages thick novels by using thicker papers and widened spacing between lines. This "Thin Ice" is no exception, the plot and the storyline are both as thin as the ice in this novelette. Down below is what I have found out the illogical parts when I watched this thin movie:

When Stone and his superior police commissioner(?) staked out in the car on a rainy night, Stone bought coffee for both. He sat in the passenger seat, the guy abruptly showed up on the driver's side and shot them multiple times. The window on the driver side shattered and the door were punched with many bullets holes.

How many bullets that pistol carried to shoot so many bullets?

If the bullets were coming from the driver's side, how come Stone was shot on his right arm? Logically, his left side would be shot instead of his right side.

If the killer pulled the trigger and aimed at the driver with so many shots, how come when we saw the wounded guy's head got no wounds at all?

When I watched these illogical scenes, I couldn't help shaking my head and cursing the stupidity and laziness of this THIN movie's director.

This is one the best Japanese drama series about running high-end restaurants with French and Japanese nouvelle cuisine with local ingredients, and how to win Michelin Star in Japan; not just one star but three. The production is so serious, the presentation of every dish shown in this series is just not just look beautiful but divine. The storyline is not a traditional, predictable, a boring straight line, but a very complicated, yet desirable one. The cast job is almost perfect, if not arranged a clown-like owner of the opponent restaurant. Just by looking at those dishes prepared by many of the characters in this series, you would realize how these actors tried their best to make their roles look so realistic. The competitions between those two restaurants in Tokyo, while trying so hard to gain Michelin Star, earning the praises from their patrons and the food critics are also not an easy job.

Actor Takuya Kimura who played the stubborn-with-conscience Chef Natsuki Obana, the beautiful and elegant Kyôka Suzuki, who played Rinko Hayami, are both so impressive to watch.

But after my praises to this great series, I have one accusation to its production company, Tokyo Broadcasting System about their unforgivable problem that has been existed and never changed or improved for so many years. Their repeated laziness of using exactly the same SOUNDTRACK, the BACKGROUND MUSIC in almost all of their drama series. We would hear and listen to the same music played on and on in so many of their drama series, even they are with different genres or time frames:

La Grande Maison Paris (2024) Japan Sinks: People of Hope (2021) Riku Oh (2017) A Life: Itoshiki Hito (2017) Nankyoku tairiku: Kami no ryouiki ni idonda otoko to inu no monogatari (2011) Karei naru ichizoku (2007) doragon-zakura (2005) Good Luck!! (2003) Beautiful Life (2000)

In these series and almost all of the other TV drama series produced by Tokyo Broadcast System I did not included or pointed out here, are exactly the same soundtracks, the way their music production teams chosen to play on and on, when to insert, or the decision to play them seemingly non-stop are all the same, not just similar, but exactly the same in so many years, they never changed and never got tired to use them again and again. They are not just disturbing, annoying and so disgust. I cannot imagine how lazy their music people could be this bad.