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Good But Could've Been Great
The core idea of this story was a moral one, like it or not. The main character, the doctor Mariko Washiya, clung to a childish, delusional belief that pure, unqualified kindness could "cure" the worst possible criminals of their criminal tendencies. And by "worst" I mean literal pedophiles. This is, I guess, a nice idea, but it is also wildly, dangerously delusional. It stood at the center of all the other host of moral questions posed by this movie. A lot of them, such as the morality of Ikuta Toma's actions throughout his life, presented genuinely interesting examinations of nature versus nurture. In addition, of course, there was the question of the morality or immorality of using extralegal means to stop the truly horrific criminals that escape police and judicial justice. That's one of the oldest moral debates in modern civilization, but it's still worth having and this movie contributed something of value to that.
Where it failed, however, was in its treatment of the doctor's immensely delusional approach to rehabilitation. There is a subset of law-abiding citizens of every nation and culture who find it fundamentally impossible to accept that some people are just bad. Perhaps something could have prevented that outcome, but nothing can change that state one it's reached. Her aim was to prove her hypothesis -- that kindness could cure criminality -- by using the worst possible type of criminal (a pedophile and murderer) as her glittering test case. In the course of the story this "reformed" pedophile was shown to have not been reformed in the slightest, so much so that after being free for less than one week he had already kidnapped another young victim. However, she still maintained her delusion, using her kindness towards Ikuta Toma (which ostensibly but not really caused him to "change") to prove herself right. Overlooking the main fact that Ikuta Toma was never a bad person. Anyone with eyes could see that he was not a deranged, immoral criminal, but rather a vigilante, of sorts, with a firm moral code. However she continued to be "kind" to him even before she realized this. And then, when she started to realize that he was always behaving morally, she took credit for that. This was never called out by the story, this incredible delusional tendency of hers.
A argument could be made that his sense of morality was actually stronger than hers. His shift, however slight and however impermanent, was to allow for the law to occasionally handle some of the criminals who crossed his path, as a way of supporting his efforts, rather than refusing to trust the legal system at all.
The question of pure sociopathy being equivalent to base criminality is an old, tired one made popular by absurd Hollywood representations of wildly brilliant, cunning, interesting serial killer sociopaths, when the reality is that the majority of them are just brainless scum. Pure sociopathy is never seen, in medical or scientific fields, to be a guarantee of criminality or a red flag or a sign of any kind. It's rare enough that it's basically not seen as anything at all but an anomaly. Such a question is so ridiculous that treating it like a deep moral conundrum is beyond boring.
That said, contrasting his sociopathy with that of the two teenage killers made for a very interesting look at nature versus nurture. And it asked some very uncomfortable questions about the nature side more than anything else. That is to say, arguably Ikuta Toma's upbringing was worse than theirs, harder, harsher, crueler. The two girls even, to whatever deranged extent, knew love while he never had. Yet he still had a hard moral core. Could it be, then, that some people are just bad?
I think that's what they were trying to do with this movie, but a few things got left on the editing room floor, I think. All in all, though, very solid. I found the scenes with the female killers almost unwatchably uncomfortable so I doubt I'll ever watch this again. But I'm glad I watched it the one time.
Where it failed, however, was in its treatment of the doctor's immensely delusional approach to rehabilitation. There is a subset of law-abiding citizens of every nation and culture who find it fundamentally impossible to accept that some people are just bad. Perhaps something could have prevented that outcome, but nothing can change that state one it's reached. Her aim was to prove her hypothesis -- that kindness could cure criminality -- by using the worst possible type of criminal (a pedophile and murderer) as her glittering test case. In the course of the story this "reformed" pedophile was shown to have not been reformed in the slightest, so much so that after being free for less than one week he had already kidnapped another young victim. However, she still maintained her delusion, using her kindness towards Ikuta Toma (which ostensibly but not really caused him to "change") to prove herself right. Overlooking the main fact that Ikuta Toma was never a bad person. Anyone with eyes could see that he was not a deranged, immoral criminal, but rather a vigilante, of sorts, with a firm moral code. However she continued to be "kind" to him even before she realized this. And then, when she started to realize that he was always behaving morally, she took credit for that. This was never called out by the story, this incredible delusional tendency of hers.
A argument could be made that his sense of morality was actually stronger than hers. His shift, however slight and however impermanent, was to allow for the law to occasionally handle some of the criminals who crossed his path, as a way of supporting his efforts, rather than refusing to trust the legal system at all.
The question of pure sociopathy being equivalent to base criminality is an old, tired one made popular by absurd Hollywood representations of wildly brilliant, cunning, interesting serial killer sociopaths, when the reality is that the majority of them are just brainless scum. Pure sociopathy is never seen, in medical or scientific fields, to be a guarantee of criminality or a red flag or a sign of any kind. It's rare enough that it's basically not seen as anything at all but an anomaly. Such a question is so ridiculous that treating it like a deep moral conundrum is beyond boring.
That said, contrasting his sociopathy with that of the two teenage killers made for a very interesting look at nature versus nurture. And it asked some very uncomfortable questions about the nature side more than anything else. That is to say, arguably Ikuta Toma's upbringing was worse than theirs, harder, harsher, crueler. The two girls even, to whatever deranged extent, knew love while he never had. Yet he still had a hard moral core. Could it be, then, that some people are just bad?
I think that's what they were trying to do with this movie, but a few things got left on the editing room floor, I think. All in all, though, very solid. I found the scenes with the female killers almost unwatchably uncomfortable so I doubt I'll ever watch this again. But I'm glad I watched it the one time.
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