This was ok. The biggest problem seemed to be that the coolest parts of the story just aren’t cinematic at all. Discovering some plot from a foreign language novel is really cool but only explaining it in outline wasn’t. Also the kidnapping was completely forced and unnecessary. It seemed like they just wanted to up the stakes but it was very off-putting for me.
There’s something about the beginning with the bouncy protagonist happier than everyone and tweaking everyone’s noses - a cliche, for one, but also just annoying if you’d ever encountered a person like this in real life.
