Nobody To Watch Over Me

Genre: Drama

Language: Japanese

Director: Ryoichi Kimizuka

Cast: Koichi Sato (The Climbers High), Mirai Shida (Kabei: Our Mother), Ryuhei Matsuda (Nightmare Detective)

Runtime: 118 minutes

Plot:

A 15-year-old middle school girl is picked up at school by the police when her elder 18-year-old brother is arrested on suspicion of randomly murdering two grade school girls. She is put under the protection of a dedicated yet conflicted police detective who has orders to shield the girl from the inevitable public outrage that is to follow. Through these two protagonists’ eyes, we get a glimpse into the vulnerability, the isolation and even the resilience of the individual when up against a volatile and often intolerant world.

Watched the movie on 13 June midnight @ The Picturehouse with Sylvia.

It is a perspective that the victim(s) and their families should be taken care of when tragedy happened. However, this movie brought out a strong message that the families of the suspect should be protected as well. As the culture differs among countries, the news-thirsty media finds all means of way to dig any kind of news in order to excel one other. And that leads to the more suicide cases for those stressful and pressured family member, especially in the Japanese society.

In this movie, the main story was a police detective protecting the younger sister of the suspect from the media over-exposure reporting of the incident. And the story leaded to another mishandling case by that police detective. I feel that this script could have expanded even further with so many characters involved. It may be better if it was made into a drama.

The teenager sister impressed the audiences with her matured acting skills. Given someone at this age and to go through such ordeal, it is unimaginable for a young actress like her to portray the role. Also the developed Internet network we have, worsen the situation.

ah-deng says - 4 / 5 Even if you are not the murderer, you will still be haunt forever since you are family, even if you changed your name.