Kaiji: Final Game (Japanese: カイジ ファイナルゲーム, Hepburn: Kaiji Fainaru Gēmu) is a 2020 Japanese live-action film based on the manga series Kaiji, written and illustrated by Nobuyuki Fukumoto. It is the final installment of a trilogy directed by Tōya Satō and premiered in Japan on January 10, 2020. Unlike the first two previous films, Kaiji and Kaiji 2, Kaiji: Final Game is not based on a specific part of the series and it is a completely original story written by Fukumoto.
| Kaiji: Final Game | |
|---|---|
 Film poster | |
| Directed by | Tōya Satō |
| Written by |
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| Based on | Kaiji by Nobuyuki Fukumoto |
| Produced by |
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| Starring |
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| Cinematography | Takashi Ohara |
| Edited by | Takashi Satō |
| Music by | Yugo Kanno |
Production company | AX-ON |
| Distributed by | Toho |
Release date |
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Running time | 127 minutes |
| Country | Japan |
| Language | Japanese |
| Box office | $19.9 million |
Cast
- Tatsuya Fujiwara as Kaiji Itō
- Nagisa Sekimizu as Kanako Kirino
- Mackenyu as Minato Hirose
- Sota Fukushi as Kōsuke Takakura
- Kōtarō Yoshida as Yoshihiro Kurosaki
- Suzuki Matsuo as Tarō Ōtsuki
- Yūki Amami as Rinko Endō
- Katsuhisa Namase as Kōtarō Sakazaki
- Ikusaburo Yamazaki as Keiji Nishino
- Masatō Ibu as Shigeru Tōgō
- Toshiki Seto as Taichi Sugawara
- Mariko Shinoda as Last Judgement challenger
- Akio Kaneda as Sōichirō Shibusawa
- Gōki Maeda as Tsuyoshi Takase
Soundtrack
Yugo Kanno composed the music for the film. The original score was released on January 8, 2020.[1]
Release
In May 2019, Kaiji: Final Game, the third and final film of Kaijis live-action trilogy. with a completely original story by Nobuyuki Fukumoto, was announced.[2][3]
Kaiji: Final Game was theatrically released on January 10, 2020 in Japan.[4]
The film premiered in Singapore on March 5, 2020.[5] It was originally planned to premiere in Malaysia on March 19, 2020,[6] but it was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the film opened on July 1, 2020.[7] The film was released in Indonesia on December 9, 2020.[8]
Novelization
A novelization of the film written by Van Madoy was published by Kodansha on November 14, 2019.[9]
Reception
Box office
During the opening weekend, Kaiji: Final Game ranked at second at the Japanese box office, earning ¥362 million ($3.29 million), and earned ¥616 million ($5.60 million) from January 10–13.[10] The film stayed at second in its third weekend and earned an additional ¥198,153,400 ($1.81 million).[11] The film dropped to fourth in its fourth weekend, and earned ¥120,022,950 ($1.10 million).[12] The film dropped from eighth to tenth in its sixth weekend and earned ¥35,480,750 ($323,000).[13] It was the eighth highest grossing film of 2020, earning ¥2.06 billion ($21 million) at the box office that year.[14][15] It also grossed $14,608 in Vietnam.[16]
Critical reception
Marcus Goh of Yahoo! Style gave the film a 3.5 out of 5 score. Goh commented that the film's start is strong, showing the dire straits that Kaiji has fallen into and considered it as a "mild political commentary on the labour market in Japan". He praised the first game showed in the film, the Tower of Babel, but stated that the rest of the games are "lacklustre in execution", and although he said that the variety of gambling challenges captures the spirit of the original manga series, the film imports some elements from the original work that "don't work so well with actual human actors". Goh concluded: "Kaiji: Final Game echoes the spirit of the manga and anime well by staying true to the elements that made it popular. It does hew a little too closely though, resulting in segments that look awkward when translated to a live-action movie. Nevertheless, fans will be pleased to see another Kaiji film on the big screen".[17]
Tay Yek Keak of Today in his review of Kaiji: Final Game, considered it as "quite enjoyably fascinating and intellectually stimulating", due that in this third installment "the ambition has grown much bigger. National-size bigger, in fact." Keak mentioned that Fujiwara in his role as Kaiji looks exactly as he was in the first film, and that the only thing that shows that 11 years have passed since the first film is that the "main winner-takes-all game here is more sedentary and less energetic." Keak ultimately added that "it's protracted, it's filled with the outlandish clichés which Japanese flicks love to indulge in and it may seem like a juvenile plaything to the uninitiated. But I like the dark financial apocalypse proposed here which is quite grimly thrilling just to ponder on".[18]
