Faceless

The law’s got a face... but It’s hiding!

Faceless / Shotai is a suspenseful crime drama that highlights just how flawed and corrupted the justice system can be and how it affects the innocent.

It's a story of Kaburagi who is wrongly accused of murder and has escaped prison, becoming a fugitive. Throughout his journey he meets several people, each with a new identity,  to find answers on his own when the system fails him, earning the trust from all of them.

Faceless was an appropriate english title for this. The disguises he adopts definitely serves the practical purpose in hiding his identity, but they also symbolize the psychological pressure to forced to exist as anyone but himself.
There is an eerie tension surrounding everyone, whether it’s the suspect or those investigating them.
The background score was really on point, adding a lot to the suspense without being too extra. It totally helped build the vibe and kept things tense in the best way.

The only issue for me was the pacing. The first half felt extremely slow compared to the climatic second half. They were trying to paint a picture in the first half, but it could be expedited a bit. And maybe they could have provided more context about Kaburagi and his background to help connect more with him as a character.

The acting across the board looked solid with everyone fitting perfectly into their roles. No one seemed out of place or unsynchronized. Yokohama Ryusei particularly stood out in the emotional scenes.

Overall, this was a good movie that kept me on the edge of my seat until the very end, questioning some serious flaws on how law works and serious consequences of turning a blind eye.

Note: I have neither read the novel nor seen the series, so this review is based solely on the movie, without any prior background.

Read More

It felt like Faceless was one of those films that it would have behooved the watcher to have read the novel it was based on first. I struggled to grasp the core concept of this film. Whether he was guilty or not seemed obvious from the beginning. His search also seemed obvious. What the audience was left with was basically a boy’s personal journey of growth and search for meaning while on the lam, without ever getting to know him very well.

Kaburagi Keiichi was only eighteen years old when he was sentenced to death for the murders of three people. Three years later he escapes from prison and begins his life on the run, donning new personas and disguises along the way. He’s a good guy who meets good people while searching for something to exonerate himself. On his trail are two detectives tasked with bringing him in and to not question if maybe they made a mistake three years ago.

Yokohama Ryusei gave solid performances as the different people Kaburagi impersonated. Yet as competently as he individualized each “new” character, I still felt distanced from Kaburagi. By jumping into the middle of the story, with Kaburagi playing different aspects of himself, hiding his true identity, it was hard to connect with the character. It would have helped to have shown the innocent eighteen-year-old before his life was thrown into the blender. The most moving scenes for me were the moments when he experienced things for the first time and made real connections with the people he met.

The film criticized a police force more concerned with expediency and image than in the truth or justice. The role of the public in demonizing defendants and demanding swift answers also subverted justice.

Faceless had an intriguing concept, yet the bouncing from identity to identity, made immersing into the film more difficult. Perhaps the 2022 drama which covered the same material was better able to delve into who Kaburagi was and what he was thinking. As a thriller it didn’t cause my heart to race or make me wonder if he was a mass murderer. As a character study, we were never let into his psyche. Despite the slow pace, I enjoyed the film, but it could have been so much more.

17 September 2026

Otousan Note: What happened to her father’s appeal?
Drama Mama Note: The most important question that was not answered was whether Kaburagi was able to finish his drama!

Read More

Life On The Run With Plenty To Keep You Engaged

Shotai deals with what happens to someone who is wrongfully convicted of a heinous crime, and finds themselves on death row and then manages to escape. It also has a parallel story regarding what has happened to the FL’s father who has faced injustice, the show’s main theme. It would seem the Japanese detectives are biased, although troubled by past events from earlier investigations into the ML.

The film is a slick production and the two hours passes by quickly. Our protagonist, although on the run, is seeking the truth of what happened that lead to his arrest and subsequent trial. During his life on the run, he adopts different disguises, works in different jobs, but his personality remains consistent throughout - he is kind and thoughtful.

Although we don’t get to see much regarding the legal side, apart from court scenes, show undersells how the Japanese justice system works -which is different to what little we see on screen. In this respect, I marked the movie down half a star for this very point. However, it doesn’t detract from the overall enjoyment of this movie.

Read More

Its a survival story

Damn, nothing crazy about it but it was well done. You could say the story was ok and it definitely felt like one of those stories where the theme is the survival of someone stranded on somewhere. You get my point. A miraculous survival story. The MC is extremely lucky to have met the people he became friends with. Because at every point of the story it could've been up for him. Still, I don't mind it cause how else is the story going to progress. Just like I said it's a survival story. Nothing else really, it's ok and well done, it's not bad or boring, well depending on the watcher. It's ok for a one time watch if you have nothing to watch.

Read More

Pursuing genuineness

Injustice: this threat that plans overhangs us all and strikes ruthlessly on some. And when it happens, we always have the choice between either consenting to its fateful sentence, or declining it and attempting to set the record straight.

That is 『Shoutai』's central issue: main character Keiichi Kaburagi, sentenced to death because of human carelessness for a crime he never committed, seeking truth in a race — or rather chase — against the clock. Thus showing humanity under its bad aspects, the movies does it too in a good light: naturally through Keiichi but also through the other characters, whose actors display neat performances. A narrative problem however lies with KK, who possesses way too many skills considering his education and displays such incredible kindness that his innocence is almost instantly recognized by the people he meets along his journey. But that facet is probably due to the inherent Christian thread of the movie: the MC not only comes from a Christian orphanage, he also is a kind of metaphor of Jesus, who was also condemned to death but still converted the people around him while believing in the good of this world (as Kaburagi says himself). That is well portrayed through an enthralling storytelling split in clearly identified chapters, through which we run successively with a mundane OST but a thrilling tension, a clever camera and even well-crafted special effects.

Coming from a novel with a first adaptation as a series in 2022, 『Shoutai』 makes good use of the medium of cinema narrate its story. The end might be predictable, but the piece of work does convey its critic of death sentence, along with a reflection on identity (as its Japanese title entails): our real identity (*shoutai*) may be defined by others, we alone carry it.

Read More