Nobody to Watch Over Me 誰も守ってくれない (Dare mo mamotte kurenai) [2008] • Japan

This film starts with a title card message saying "In the event a minor commits a serious criminal offense police authorities may seek to shield the minor's family from excessive media scrutiny and public hostility. The protection is given to prevent members of the accused's family from taking their own lives in response to the trauma."

Some eighteen year boy is hauled off for allegedly killing two grade school children. The media is all over his house. The cops are too. One cop is assigned to protect the boy's fifteen year old sister. He made a mistake in the past and has a shaky hand. He's two days away from taking a vacation to save his marriage. Yawn. A reporter is gonna make his life hell. Stupid plot. Even stupider is when the reporter confronts the cop and tells him the fifteen year old girl should be killed as punishment for what her brother did. And then they show internet messages going around calling for the death of the little girl. Oh, and the mother kills herself in her bathroom while twenty cops sit around not protecting her. The cop protecting the little girl takes her to his shrink's house so we can get more scoop on his problems. He then goes back to the little girl's house to get her cell phone because she said she would be embarrassed if the cops read her email. Not like any of the twenty cops already there might have found it or thought it might be useful as evidence. The cop brings it back to the girl and one of her friends calls her up and says "Bummer your mom committed suicide, huh?"

This movie is so full of stupid I switched it off halfway through. People will claim that this is a side of Japanese culture westerners don't know about. I say prove it. The fact that everything else about this film is so dumb I have no reason to believe the part about the press and public calling for the death of the little girl to be representative of anything but nonsense and bad writing. The parents, maybe. But the little girl? I'm not buying it.

This was Japan's official entry to the Oscars. WTF?


IMDb

2 comments:

  1. I was rally disappointed with this movies as well. It's premise is actually pretty good, but after the first 15 minutes or so, the film turns into a horrible j-dorama-esque mess. Too bad!

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  2. I posted about this on a couple film boards. I want someone, from Japan preferably, to stand up and say this film is nonsense. No one has. That bothers me.

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