Tuesday, May 09, 2023

Nozomi / Wish jmovie review

I watched Nozomi because it had Tsutsumi Shinichi and Ishida Yuriko in it and you can't go wrong with those two. They play parents to a son and daughter and Tsutsumi Shinichi is an architect. The son is injured and stops playing soccer. 

Son comes home one day with a bruise, Ishida Yuriko one day finds a knife in her son's drawers and dad confiscates the knife but son refuses to say why he has a knife. Son disappears, sends a message not to worry and someone from his soccer club is found dead.

Nozomi is your basic youth crime with media and public harassing the family story. The difference is that the story is told from the parents' perspective as they hold on to hope. I think anyone can understand the fear of one day not being able to contact your son. The police don't give the parents much information and Matsuda Shota plays a journalist who gives Ishida Yuriko information in exchange for pictures and an interview.

The public at large start to assume that the son is a killer. Dad who is an architect starts losing business. Mom would rather that her son be a killer because it means that he is alive. Sister is despairing that she will have no future. Everyone is too quick to jump to conclusions.

To be honest I was pretty bored throughout this movie because I have seen this very Japanese story so many times and I don't think the script or directing was good enough. It did not bloody make sense that the police did not search the son's room for clues. They didn't do it because the pivotal scene of the movie is the dad searching the room in the end but the plothole kept staring me in the face. Meh.

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