Samayou yaiba

A widower's teenage daughter is murdered. A mysterious phone call tells him who the killers are and he plots revenge. Seems like just another prosaic police, victim and killers, good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, movie, right?

Well, yes and no. The difference between this movie and most of its genre is that the emphasis is on characters, not plot. The characters often make stereotyped (or implausible) choices, but the rationale is far more well-considered than it would normally be - there are no mavericks who know what is right and alienate anyone who disagrees, and the audience is never expected to go blindly along with the hero's motives, but is left to draw its own conclusions. In this sense it was very different from most similar American movies, in which such things are much more clearly, and often simplistically, defined.

There were flaws, and it was necessarily slow-moving at times, especially when it needed to show just how anguish the father was experiencing, but on the whole well worth a look.

If this was an American film, there would be truckloads of guns, gallons of blood, more dead bodies than I have fingers, and raging masculinity. The rapists would be Yakuza leaders who castrate their subordinates at whim and terrorize entire neighbourhoods as full time employment, laughing at impotent/incompetent/corrupt police investigators as they escalate their rampage. They would be so incomprehensibly evil that the audience would have little choice but to share a sense of vindication when the rapists' heads explode from a twelve gauge at point blank range after the avenging protagonist dispense one-liners like "I'll be back..." or "do you believe in Buddha? Well, you're gonna meet him." Also, there would be at least one glimpse of bare female breasts.

Alas, this film is not one of those formulaic Hollywood trash flicks, and it's not some standard crime-drama out to deliver elementary moral messages about juvenile delinquency or 'law and order' (and anyone who thinks it is, wasn't paying attention), and here it stands out.

Instead, the film focuses on the characters who are connected, however loosely, to the tragedy of the abduction and murder of Nagamine's daughter, from the police detectives investigating the case (and later attempting to apprehend him) to the country lodge hostess and her father where Nagamine stays during his search for the last rapist. But 'focus' is not the right word, because we never come to know any of the characters. They are like blank slates with no backgrounds. Other than the grieving father out to avenger his daughter, they have no motivations. They are strangers you will never get to know, whose fates you will never come to care about even as the end credits roll. So in spite of the score, the performances, and the desire to render a story premise more complex than simply 'revenge', in the end, the film simply becomes unmemorable.

On a side note, one thought came to me as I watched the scene where the police enters an abandoned mansion to apprehend a suspect without semi-automatics, gas masks, and a portable ram, just flash lights: Americans -do- live in a police state.

I think previous reviewers have missed the point of this film. It's primarily focused on whether we should punish juveniles who commit adult crimes with adult sentences. Or should juveniles get away with it in the interests of their repentance and return to to society.

It's an excellent Japanese police drama with a top Japanese cast of actors. Not like your over the top Hollywood stuff. This is more real life and it's a problem that many countries, not only Japan,face today.

Juveniles rape and murder and know they cannot get the proper full punishment because they are classified as juveniles. They laugh at society and the law.

Even the police must get frustrated with the situation. As one policeman in the movie asks:"Are the police here to protect the law or to protect the citizens. Where is the sense of justice?" I say it's well worth a watch.