The Journalist 2019 jmovie review

Netflix's The Journalist is one of my favourite shows of 2022. The exiting show based on the Moritomo Gakuen scandal showed that the quality of Netflix jdoramas was going up with The Journalist and Alice in Borderland.

I wanted to wait until enough time has passed to dive into the movie because I did not want to watch an edited version of something I had just watched. The good news is that the movie which came first is pretty different from the tv series.

Shim Eun Kyung is doing the Yonekura Ryoko role as Yoshioka Erika a reporter for Toto newspaper. Instead of a brother who is comatose,  Erika's father committed suicide. Matsuzaka Tori works for the naicho otherwise known as Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office. Same as the series, the powers of the CIRO are being used to keep the people in power Matsuzaka Tori's conscious is troubled.

So the movie is missing the newspaper delivery boy story ,the finance officer and evil Santamaria Yusuke. Two important elements of the Netflix show. It is just a story about the reporter and CIRO officer. There's no way to compare a 2 hour movie versus a 6 episode series in terms of content so I'll leave it at that.

Of note is Tetsushi Tanaka who plays the same role in the series as the CIRO. The story is similar to the series since it is more of a cover up but the contents are different. The movie is more like a thriller which plays a bit like a horror movie and the tv show is more about the importance of journalism and keeping the bastards honest.

I know The Journalist won picture of the year in 2019 but the directing is not very good. Seriously the tv series looks so much better. Way too dark and cinematography too pedestrian. The shaky cam brought nothing to the movie at all.  

Acting is good but the Netflix series is just so much better it cannot be ignored. I wish I had seen the movie first to be able to form an objective opinion but I wonder if it got best movie more for the subject matter? Meh from me. Go watch the series on Netflix if you haven't.