Why are so many Japanese sci-fi thrillers so sure our near-future rulers will try to tyrannize us, dehumanize us or, as in "Batoru Rowaiaru (Battle Royale)," make us slaughter each other, even when our only crime is possessing raging adolescent hormones? Given what I've seen of Tokyo's Kabutocho financial district these past few decades I'm less afraid of the ruthless than the clueless.
Based on a novel by Keigo Higashino, who has supplied fictional fodder for many TV dramas and films, the sci-fi thriller "Purachina Deta (Platinum Data)" is set in 2017, a very near future indeed. DNA analysis, however, has progressed so far that from one strand of a murder victim's hair, arrogant, whip-smart police DNA expert Ryuhei Kagura (Kazunari Ninomiya) can rattle off a long list of the killer's characteristics, down to the length of his toes. Soon after, the cops ID and arrest the suspect using the DNA Investigation System that Kagura and his colleagues have developed.
Reiji Asama (Etsushi Toyokawa), a veteran detective on the case, suspects that all is not ethically kosher at Kagura's Special Analysis Research Institute, though he can't quite say what or why. Several months later, he and Kagura come into contact again when autistic math whiz Saki Tateshina (Kiko Mizuhara) and her brother and fellow Institute programmer are killed, the latest in a series of victims with a rib removed postmortem.
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