How is Conflict similar to Meitantei Conan (Detective Conan)?
Short synopsis of Conflict
Conflict (1945) (#ad) is a murder mystery movie. It tells the story of a man (named Richard Mason, played by Humphrey Bogart) who kills his own wife (named Kathryn Mason, played by Rose Hobart), but the question that the audience will be asking isn’t who committed the crime but on whether the criminal has executed the perfect crime and on whether the victim is actually still alive or not.Short synopsis of Meitantei Conan
Meitantei Conan (#ad) is the story of a brilliant detective (named Kudo Shinichi) who solves all sorts of mysteries, including murder crimes.The title character is a high school detective who ends up back in his childhood form (he takes on the name Edogawa Conan as a kid), due to certain circumstances, but who is able to retain his knowledgeable and skilled mind. He might currently look like a kid but his mind is still that of a very smart and capable adult.
Similarities between Conflict and Meitantei Conan
What similarities do these 2 shows share aside from the fact that both belong in the mystery genre? When I was watching Conflict, parts of it reminded me strongly of Detective Conan because of the striking similarity of some of the scenes.
Broken leg thanks to an accident
In the Conflict film, thanks to a car accident, Richard Mason, an engineer and the main character, breaks his leg so he is unable to walk for a while. When his leg heals, Richard pretends that he is still unable to walk even though the truth is that he can already walk with the help of a cane.
In episode 1 of Detective Conan, there’s this guy (he’s just a minor character that only appears in this episode and isn’t even named) who does the same thing that Richard does.
He gets his leg broken in an accident and he pretends to be unable to walk even though his leg is fully healed already. He even sits in a wheelchair to strengthen the lie.
Tell a lie to commit the perfect crime
Both this guy and Richard Mason have a very good reason for this pretense. They need people to believe that they’re injured and incapacitated in order to get away with murder. Both are planning to murder someone so they need an alibi to be able to avoid suspicion.With a broken leg, who would suspect that they could actually get up and kill someone, right? Both might think that they’ve committed the perfect crime and even the audience might think so as well, but, of course, in the end, both of them are caught and exposed for the murderers that they really are as the truth finally comes to light.
*Notes:
- Image with added text was modified by Freya Yuki (CC:BY-SA) based on the image by MizuSasori (CC:BY-SA) from deviantArt
- The bandage on the figure’s arm is meant to represent the bandages that Richard Mason from Conflict 1945 movie and the guy from Meitantei Conan anime series used to pretend that they were still injured and incapable of moving around
- Pics are enlarged product images from Amazon.com; links shown above
- YouTube video features the Conflict 1945 murder mystery movie film trailer