Rupan sansei

It is clear that Ryuhei Kitamura has poured his heart to make this live-action adaptation as stunning as possible. The movie was heavy on action, and had quite a generous budget, with lots of explosion and CGI to 'complement' the action. The locations look great and the photography is very attractive.

Some other things are a little toostereotyped though, and sure Kuroki may fill out a leather jumpsuitpretty well but her acting skills seem to be restricted to smirking,even at a funeral, and in an odd kind of way, that pretty much sums up the film – good looking, but lacking depth. It's like they couldn't decide whether to go slapstick or Oceans 11 and as a result waver somewhere in between, where there aren't really all that many surprises.

The plot for the film? Honestly, a bit weak, and never properly fleshed out. A lot of characters who seem important to the story are never given proper motivations.

Yes, Lupin III is entertaining, but only on a fairly shallow level. In the end Lupin III is a fun romp that doesn't ask for much. Sadly, that's exactly what you'll give it.

I am a big fan of Lupin the 3rd series. Although it made many fans angry, I didn't feel it was not so bad that I got angery. Frankly speaking, I thought it didn't have to be made closer to the original forcibly. If you suppose it's another thing, it's ok enough to watch it withought getting bored.

You will laugh, be entertained and enjoy as a child with this movie. It's one of the better live action adaptations that I've ever seen. It doesn't concern itself with slavishly following the original manga and isn't afraid to make radical changes or new additions to serve the strengths of the film medium. So, you don't have to read the manga or watched the anime to understand what's going in this movie.

The manga styles and movie styles fit the genre perfectly without downplaying either medium, mostly for two principal reasons: a great visual and a great cast.

Shun Oguri is perfectly cast as Lupin and Tadanobu Asano seems the best Zenigata ever.

Beside the script is based on a series of clichés thousand times played in other films it works because it's fun.

If you like a detective thriller kind of story with lots of action, you could do a lot worse than this. It's fun, has a lot of good stunts and it's an easy watch. There might not be the biggest acting challenge going on and the characters may seem easily drawn too, but that shouldn't be an obstacle in enjoying this.

It might be a bit too long for some people though and I am not that familiar with the general story of "Lupin" (this is not the first movie made about this character), so I can't tell you how this is compared to other sources/movies. I do know that I did enjoy myself and was entertained enough to give this at least one thumb up

I really enjoyed this film.

I've seen the anime a few times, but I could never get into it. The film leads someone with no experience carefully into their world while (according to my friends who've seen it) pay a nod in all the right places to the original work.

I can see where a non-Japanese audience is going to have problems with the film:

How do you shoot a film with an international cast which live in a world where Japanese is the lingua franca? You dub it. I came close to leaving the theater to tell the staff the tracking was off but it quickly became obvious what they were doing. Honestly, it could be distracting but if you think about it, every animation works on the same principle.

(One benefit to the dubbing is that they could use actors with animation quality voices to fill the voice roles for many of the actors, or allow the principals to animate their voices in a way that would look unnatural in real life.)

Also, they shot the film in HDR (high dynamic range) which really animated the facial expressions and heighten the the boundary between real and imagined scenery -- a huge plus in this kind of film, and especially beautiful to watch on the big screen.

Oguri Shun's performance was top notch. He nailed the role. The other characters hit their character's tone, too. And when you see the situation the characters will find themselves in, you'll see they are not played as one dimensionally as the typical anime/cartoon to live action film. Their situations are complex and multifaceted.

I recommend this film. It's entertaining, beautiful to watch, presents the genre in a new way, and gives you a dose of Japanese-isms.