Rein Ici.

Black and white narrated crime film starring an ex-homicide P.I. is typically actually a recipe for absolute disaster in 48 Hours. The reason being is that you kind of need to produce something absolutely extraordinary to stand above other teams who make film noirs along this line each and every year without fail. So how did Rein Ici do? Not quite a spectacular failure due to them understanding the tropes of the genre so well, but this was quite a generic murder investigation I have to say.

Firstly, the elephant in the room of going black and white...why? I'm genuinely not trying to be mean here but if you did that because you think you needed to I suggest taking a look at how neo noir films gave the genre a modern take (POINT BLANK, DIRTY HARRY, CHINATOWN for starters) decades ago. If you've going to strip your film of colour and follow a noir blueprint this closely then for me that contrast needs to be way up, those shadows need to be mysterious and saturation from the absence of colour needs to go way up as well. The costuming worked I must admit, but it felt like you clicked the footage into black and white in your editing software and called it a day.

The investigation did go down an interesting rabbit hole, and the characters performed their lines well. Also whilst visually I had major issues I must admit the edit was strong, and camera angles themselves at times really stood out plus the sound and soundtrack was very well done. I just wish that the film hadn't been so generic.

Story: 1.5/5
Technical: 2/5
Elements: 2/5
Overall: 1.5/5