2/5 starsPremiering out of competition at this year’s Venice International Film Festival, this latest effort from Japanese writer-director Sabu, in which a Taipei detective battles amnesia, is an underwhelming twist on the police procedural that never truly feels like it knows, or even cares, what it wants to be.Taiwanese actor Ethan Ruan Ching-tien (The Pig, the Snake and the Pigeon) stars as Detective Lee, a formidable policeman who oversees a loyal crew of men with nicknames like “Wolf”, “Bear” and “Smallfry”. After a sting operation goes disastrously wrong due to his brain fog, Lee realises something is drastically amiss.“Stress-induced amnesia,” suggests the doctor, but it is not enough to see Lee take some time off. Instead, hiding his memory issues and clad in a stylish white suit and black shirt, he barrels headlong into the next case: the kidnapping of a five-year-old boy whose abductors seek a fortune for his safe return.ARRESTED MEMORY Trailer | TIFF 2026The boy is the son of Hatta (Shinichi Tsutsumi), the Japanese head of a furniture company, who lives in luxury and certainly doesn’t suffer fools. Lee’s erratic actions don’t help, with the intolerant Hatta soon believing the officer has gone on the run with the ransom, as an increasingly muddled plot descends into a mass of shouting and shoot-outs.