Shizumanu Taiyo movie / The Unbroken (2009)

In getting ready to watch WOWOW's Shizumanu Taiyo, I decided to watch the 2009 movie on which the dorama is based on. The 3 hour plus movie starts off with Japan's biggest air disaster and then through flashbacks we see the relationship between Onchi and Gyoten, two leaders of the airline workers union.

Onchi sticks to his guns and his banished to Karachi while Gyoten helps management to set up a new union and works his way up the ranks. Shizumanu Taiyo is the story of two friends that go on two very different paths and is set against the corruption politicians and people in charge of the airline who only want to protect their own interests.

The main character of Onchi reminds me of Goda in WOWOW's Marks no Yama and Lady Joker; the straightforward person who is trying to do the right thing while working in an organisation that is corrupted. Coincidentally, Goda plays Onchi in the dorama version.

However, the movie just feels too uneven and unwieldy. The 3 hour runtime is too short for what the story tried to do and Gyoten and the female characters feel very shortchanged. The movie should have been streamlined even more and the scenes about the air disaster reduced.

My main reason for watching was to prepare myself for the WOWOW dorama so I wasn't really thinking about the shows problems.  As a movie its kind of ok but nothing special. You can grab it from avistaz or you can just watch it on youtube with English subs.

Gonna start watching the WOWOW version after this. Fingers crossed it doesn't get bogged down like the movie but I am very concerned how they are going to fill the 20 episodes based on what I saw in the movie. 8-10 episodes yes but 20? There better be enough character fleshing out stuff to keep things interesting.

My other concern is whether it might feel too similar to so many WOWOW shows about corruption. If you want to watch the dorama, you can stream it here.