Detective Conan: Quarter of Silence

An explosion occurs on a newly opened underground line in Tokyo. The target does not look randomly chosen, and the trail leads out of the city to a village submerged under a dam years before. Conan goes there. The village's former residents have scattered and those who remain will not talk to anyone. There is snow, the road is closed, and the attacker is preparing the next move. To solve it Conan has to understand a decision taken thirty years ago. Yasuichiro Yamamoto directs. It is the fifteenth feature in the series. The axis of the narrative is not revenge but expropriation; the story of the people forced to move for the building of the dam is at the centre of the plot. That choice is unusual for the series; Conan films generally tell more abstract crime plots, while the ground here is social. The winter locations are the best worked visual side of the film and the finale takes place under snow. The action sections are in the known exaggeration of the series; the rules of physics are bent, and that is a deliberate choice. Its limit is length; there is a long stretch in the middle where the investigation slows. It did good business in Japan and the series went on producing a film every year. Who it is for: people following the series and viewers who like classic murder plots. Who it is not for: a new viewer lacks the character background, the middle is heavy, and the solution leans on coincidence.