Nobody to Watch over Me jmovie review

I am pretty sure I watched this long time ago but did not write about it and came across it recently and could not remember anything so decided to watch it again. Part of blogging is just to keep track of what I have and have not seen.

Juvenile crime is a commonly used in jdoramas and movies because watching someone escape punishment because of their age can easily arouse anger but the answer is always not so simple. Nobody to Watch over Me comes into the issue from another angle, that from the suspect's family.

Shida Mirai is the sister of a brother who is suspected of killing two girls. The outside of their house turns into a media circus and the most memorable scene in the movie is the police trying to protect the parents by getting them divorced and remarried so that the koseki or family register has the children using the mother's last name. In other words the parents divorced so that the husband can enter the wife's koseki thus changing everyone's last name. Koseki is one of the things that make Japan so unique whereas in most countries anyone can change their name easily.

Sato Koichi plays the rough cop with a daughter and estranged wife who is assigned to look after Shida Mirai. Sato Koichi's only concern is giving his daughter her present and trying to patch this up with his wife. Bad things happen to Shida Mirai's family and Sato Koichi finds out that he not only has to protect her from the press but also from the public at large.

I enjoyed the scenes with Ishida Yuriko and Yanagiba Toshihiro as the couple who run a bed and breakfast  that Sato Koichi brings Shida Mirai to. I can't complain about anything but I don't think it is good enough to have been represent Japan for best foreign film at the oscars.

Nobody to Watch over Me is a watchable movie about how the family of a criminal is also victim of a crime and how society's eagerness to fee righteous anger and lead to people doing wrong things in the name of justice. Watch it if you feel like a serious movie about people's response to crime from the perspective of the suspect's family.