Kindachi Kosuke: The Queen Bee
Kindachi Kosuke: The Queen Bee
| 06 January 2006 (USA)
Kindachi Kosuke: The Queen Bee Trailers

The movie is part of the Kindaichi TV movie series. Kindaichi is played by actor Goro Inagaki. The character's grandfather began with the written word. Kousuke Kindaichi started life in the novels of Seishi Yokomizo, written and set in post-war Japan. Inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie, Kindaichi is still very much a unique character, giving the Japanese their very own literary hero-detective. Young Hajime Kindaichi is a young man with bad dandruff and worse dress-sense (decades before Columbo), who wears a trademark, scruffy sunhat. He also happens to be better than the police at deductive reasoning. Having gained publicity for solving a high-profile murder case, the detectives allow him to work with them again. This story is slimmer than the twisty plots of Inugami and Village, but is graced by the presence of Chiaki Kuriyama (Battle Royale, Kill Bill Vol. 1, The Great Yokai War) in the title role.

Reviews
Actuakers One of my all time favorites.
ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.
Stephanie There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes
Catherina If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.
sillyman-2 From what I gather, Kosuke Kindaichi is a fictional Japanese detective, similar to Sherlock Holmes, who was created in the 1940s and went on to solve 77 cases. He has been featured in many films and TV series. One of his cases, 'Joobachi' or 'Queen Bee' was first filmed in 1952, then remade in 2006. It is the 2006 version I am reviewing. I obtained it very cheaply from HKflix.com on a R0 disk called 'The File of Young Kindaichi: Queen Bee'.It appears to be part of a series as there are plenty of other Kindaichi titles on the site, although the part of Kindaichi appears to be regularly re-cast. In 'Queen Bee', he is played for the first time by Goro Inagaki. The movie lats for two hours although, from the way it is paced, I am wondering if it was originally a 3-part TV series.It really is very bad: the acting is over the top and melodramatic and the plot is convoluted and senseless. Kindaichi wears a cape and floppy hat and stands around doing significant poses. Things get worse after he solves the case with half an hour to go leaving the rest of the film excruciatingly boring as all the plot points are slowly explained.The main reason to watch is Chiaki Kuriyama but unfortunately she is given little to do except stand on cliff-tops, look helpless and demure then suddenly give one of her trademark glares to camera. She plays Tomoko, an 18-year old girl who has spent her life on a remote island but who is now brought to the mainland by her rich step-father to meet three candidate husbands. Murder ensues! She also plays, in flash-back, Tomoko's deceased mother who was suspected of murdering Tomoko's father. Neither character is strong but merely reacts to events.The subtitling on the DVD is pretty poor. All in all, not very good but Chiaki completists will want it . . . plus all the other users appear to be giving it much higher ratings than I have!