Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway review – motorbike whodunnit cranked up to top speed

The half-pint sleuth investigates another mystery with the franchise’s usual gorgeous cityscapes, sharply sketched characters and general brio

C oming hard on the heels of last year’s One-Eyed Flashback comes the 29th cinema outing for Conan Edogawa (voiced by Minami Takayama), the gumshoe forced to occupy a kid’s body. In the meantime, the franchise seems to have turned into Akira : the first 10 minutes opens not only with a seemingly phantom headless biker riding past Conan’s gang in the countryside, but then three more choppers tearing up a Yokohama freeway like an urban wall of death.

The half-pint sleuth and pals are on their way to a motorcycle convention, where the star of the show is Chihaya (Miyuki Sawashiro), the auburn-tressed elite bike cop who was pursuing the felons. The real torque of the town, though, is the mysterious black superbike that harries other two-wheelers; Conan tags on surreptitiously in wide-eyed-schoolboy mode, as he does, while Chihaya continues her investigation. On one street corner, she makes a pitstop at a floral tribute where her old unit chief Asagi (Yuko Sanpei) caused the death of another suspect.

With a torn-from-the-headlines conspiracy revolving around automated vehicles and big data, Fallen Angel of the Highway thrashes through the gears of another briskly enjoyable whodunnit. But it’s not completely convincing: Conan continues his habit of advancing the detective work in what feel like retroactively explanatory info-dumps, rather than organically teased-out revelations. With the little guy remaining something of a story device, no single character fully resonates in his place – even Chihaya’s personal trauma, involving her bomb-disposal expert brother, feels jammed into this 20-vehicle plot pileup.

But the potboiler tendencies don’t detract from the franchise’s brio, which is fully on show in director Takahiro Hasui’s high-class visuals. Sharp and idiosyncratic character work stands out against limpidly gorgeous cityscapes, making regular use of deep-focus effects for extra cinematic kick. While the many chase sequences don’t quite drum up Akira’s hallucinatory street spirit, they have their own coursing, scything dynamism that is nearly as impressive. If you can cope with the story revometer being constantly cranked up high, it’s hard not to be swept along.