Review | Masquerade Night movie review: Takuya Kimura, Masami Nagasawa reunite for star-studded Japanese whodunnit sequel

Directed by Masayuki Suzuki, Masquerade Night, the sequel to 2019’s Masquerade Hotel, is another spirited and consistently entertaining caper

Detective Nitta (Takuya Kimura) returns to the Hotel Cortesia Tokyo after receiving a tip-off that a criminal will attend its New Year’s Eve masked ball

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Masami Nagasawa (left) and Takuya Kimura in a still from Masquerade Night (category: I, Japanese), directed by Masayuki Suzuki.

Published: 7:45pm, 19 Oct 2021

3/5 stars

The best hotels maintain their impeccable reputations by offering their guests an unparalleled experience of comfort, service and privacy every time they stay. Audiences returning to the Hotel Cortesia Tokyo for this sequel to Masquerade Hotel, a star-studded whodunnit, can expect polished entertainment of similar quality to that of the 2019 film.

Masquerade Night sees hard-nosed homicide detective Nitta (Takuya Kimura) and the rest of his department return to the luxurious establishment for another round of undercover antics, after receiving an anonymous tip-off that a wanted murderer will attend the hotel’s New Year’s Eve masked ball.

Director Masayuki Suzuki has assembled another mouthwatering ensemble of top-tier Japanese stars, led by the returning Masami Nagasawa as the hotel’s no-nonsense Ms Yamagishi, to present another spirited and consistently entertaining caper. It is so uncannily on a par with its predecessor that we begin to question if we ever left.

Yamagishi, who now works the concierge desk and is under consideration for promotion to the hotel’s Los Angeles branch, remains committed to respecting her guests’ privacy and bending to their every request.

“Impossible” is a word that has no place in a hotelier’s vocabulary, she tells Nitta, who is, in turn, resolutely suspicious of everyone he encounters.