Detour! (1996 film)

"All of these tribes are not ours for my 'detour' vacation."

- Yuri Kanako

Detour! is a 1996 Indo-Japanese action-adventure film written, produced, and directed by Kohmi Hirose. Inspired from her earliest film, the film stars Hirose and Naomi Tamura. It was an Indo-Japanese co-production between Kohmi Hirose Entertainment and Crystal Letter Films, with the support from Perfect Blue Productions, the National Film Development Corporation of India, and El TV Kadsre.

It is regarded as Kohmi Hirose's best films of all time, as well as the highest-grossing film from the film's co-producer Crystal Letter Films. It was given a positive reviews for screenplay, performance, visuals, action scenes, and tones, while criticized its humor. It was a critical and commercial success, grossing over $200 million within the $33 million budget. It was selected by India as an submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film at the 69th Academy Awards along with Indian, but was not nominated.

It has received an anime adaptation in 2009, produced by GONZO. In 2017, Library of Congress selected the film for its National Film Registry listing for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2021, Kohmi Hirose Entertainment, one of the producers for the film, released an Blu-ray/Ultra 4K remaster of the film for its 25th anniversary.

Plot
The film starts in the jungles of Assam, where the black tribes are trying to search the golden monkey statue thoughout the jungle after it was disappeared one day. They are tired at their homebase after they failed their search, and one said that it might be on the temple ruins. The tribes are having a serious commission, and just they continue to search the golden monkey, their leader Unga thinks that someone is trying to steal it. When he passed their commission, they started fighting each order.

Meanwhile at the late afternoon, two foreign girls from Japan, cheerful Misato Kizawa and bookwormer Yuri Kanako, are seeing tourism attractions in India during their two-day vacation. Misato thinks that this will be great time for them, and Yuri agrees. Then the two girls meet Surajit, a young man who was trying to buy a hotdog. Shocked, Misato and Yuri say to him that they are going to take a break at Kalimpong, West Bengal.

Misato and Yuri go on bus for their trip to Morgan House. When they arrive, they meet her friends Natsumi and Kei. They tell Natsumi and Kei that they will see anything at Mumbai. And just before they continue talking, another people named Shakti and Azami arrived to Morgan House to have their tea party.

At 5:00 PM, they have a freetime in Morgan House, while Yuri and Misato have a talk about how they can go to Bombay with one of their foreigners' car. They have no vehicle which is in their destination at train station, and Yuri said they will be sure to go back within two days of their vacation.

As the cold, foggy starts at the mountains, Yuri, Misato, and their other friends went to their rooms at Morgan House to stay warm.

Japan

 * Kohmi Hirose as Yuri Kanako
 * Naomi Tamura as Misato Kizawa
 * Akiko Yada as Natsumi Koshiro
 * Yoshihiko Hakamada as Kei Yagami
 * Nana Mizuki as Miko

India

 * Farkha Chakra as Surajit
 * Prosenjit Chatterjee as Shakti
 * Shabana Sadique as Azami

Production
The main photography for this film was started on August 1995, and ended on March 1996 with seven months in total. Detour! was filmed in West Bengal and Maharashtra, and shot in a 35mm Techniscope. The film was printed in Technicolor at El TV Kadsre Films' laboratory in Avohkah, resulting in return of Technicolor films in India.