The Suspect (Odoru Legend) Review

Though I'd read enthusiastic comments about the TV shows and films, it wasn't until I was asked to contribute a program note for a film festival that I had the chance to sit down and watch one of them.

Coming late to the party, I was surprised that THE SUSPECT is a stand-alone film. No doubt devoted fans might get more out of it -- or be more critical -- but the film serves as an intriguing introduction to what Mark Schilling of The Japan Times has called "the Japanese film industry's answer to 'Star Wars.'"

The film begins with Chief Inspector Shinji Muroi (Toshiro Yanagiba) in handcuffs. A female narrator fills us in. A young policeman was accused of murder. He fled from questioning, ran into the street, and was killed in a traffic accident -- which closes the case. But Muroi smells something fishy and reopens the investigation.

That enrages his superiors, the Chief of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department and the Deputy Comissioner of the National Police Agency. The two men are locked in a power struggle, each trying to land the nation's top law-enforcement job, and are using the case as a political football. Caught in the middle, Muroi finds himself arrested on a trumped-up charge and is soon fighting the battle of his life, pitted against a malevolent law firm and the Byzantine machinations of police bureaucrats.

Stoic and stubborn, Muroi is far from the typical Hollywood police hero. He doesn't crack jokes, he
doesn't fly off the handle, and he doesn't brandish a gun.

And he faces considerable adversaries with few allies. His defense attorney is a young woman who hates the
police and is vastly inexperienced. Three of his old buddies from Bayside appear briefly to lend moral support, but Muroi is mostly left to his own devices as he valiantly attempts to clear his name. Most of all, he wants to see justice done, and becomes determined to see that the real culprits are uncovered.

Though most of the action takes place behind closed doors, THE SUSPECT generates a fair amount of tension as director Ryoichi Kimizuka keeps the atmosphere claustrophobic. Information about the characters is wisely doled out piecemeal until we get a good picture of all the players and most of their motivations.

With an occasional light touch, the film is not oppressively dark or grim. Muroi may not be a joyfully berserk rebellious cop, yet his rigid determination to do the right thing is strangely reassuring. In the end, it's not so much the mystery that is solved, as it is the characters who are revealed.

Review by Peter Martin.