There are movies about people being falsely accused of crimes, but probably not many where the crime is not murder, not rape, not armed robbery, but groping. In this drama from Masayuki Suo, the writer-director of the original Japanese version of Shall We Dance?, the main character is falsely accused of having fondled a teenage girl in a crowded subway car. Everyone from the police to the prosecutors to his court-appointed attorney tells him to plead guilty, but, as the title says, he knows he is innocent and refuses. Some of what he goes through is peculiar to the Japanese legal system, notably the way a series of hearings before a judge replaces a discrete trial. In more significant ways, though, the issues the movie brings up suggest problems inherent to any legal system. Both the judges and the prosecutors have vested interests in convictions. Corruption is not required to produce unfair results. Meanwhile, the female lawyer eventually assigned to defend the case struggles with her own feeling that the problem of women being groped on subways has not been taken seriously enough. The movie is methodical, and arguably slow, as it depicts step by step how this seemingly simple case proceeds, but it should be required viewing for those who make simplistic arguments about the need to “get tough on crime” without considering the need to protect the innocent.
IMDB link
viewed 4/8/08; reviewed 4/9/08; screened at Philadelphia Film Festival
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