Lupin III: The First (2019)

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Reviewed 08 Aug 2025

Lupin does Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Lively, spectacular, shallow. Lupin has great energy, but the other characters are often sidelined. This film does manage to clear the (low) bar of making a big deal of the “Lupin legacy” and pacing it well, though it also frames the concept of legacy and family in terms of bloodlines, which is weird in a film about fighting nazis (things fell into place when I learnt the director also did Godzilla Minus One). There's also the redemption of the nazi professor with the god complex. Does he stop being a nazi? No, but he does regret being mean to a white woman. For all the film's flaws, it does involve Zenigata and Lupin allying against nazis, and a bunch of nazis get humiliated and die in the process.