The vagaries of Japan's legal system have long been an important concern for film directors keen to examine the rightward trend of Japanese society. Since World War II, Japan has produced many famous directors who question the court system and analyze judicial issues, and recently Kore-eda has also slightly changed his directorial style to promote this topic with the inexplicable "Third Degree Suspect". The Prosecutor's Sinner continues the spirit of Kore-eda's predecessors and incorporates all the essence of the genre's films, consciously exploring similar questions about the nature of justice in the social context of the conservative Shinzo Abe administration.
Mogami (Takuya Kimura)
The story begins with Okino (Kazuya Ninomiya), a novice prosecutor who has just arrived at Tokyo's district prosecutor, who is appointed by his senior Magnolia (Takuya Kimura) to investigate the murder of an elderly couple who appear to be running an illegal loan shark business. One of a series of suspicious figures listed as suspects has attracted the attention of the top – Matsukura (Sasuke), who was arrested on suspicion of murdering a female student whom Mogami knew and liked during his student days, and was subsequently released due to insufficient evidence. Now that the statute of limitations for that case has expired, but the top still can't let go, it is decided to bring Matsukura to justice for murdering the elderly couple.
Okino (Kazuya Ninomiya)
At the same time, Mogami himself is also involved in a conspiracy in which tanano (Hiratake Dai), an old friend who is now a member of parliament, is accused of embezzlement and bribery. Director Makoto Harada begins with Okino's last seminar before graduation, and in a brief prologue, Makoto gives some cynical lectures on the role of prosecutors and the nature of justice. Like the lawyer in The Third Degree, who bluntly exposes the insignificance of truth before the law, justice is a game of winning by weaving an unbreakable story. He said flatly, "The rain that cleanses sin, this kind of thing does not exist at all." But he was still obsessed with justice, and even collected a bunch of gavel to display in his office — in fact, Japanese judges don't use mallets, but due to the popularity of Western films, it is clear that everyone has generally acquiesced to the connection.
Tanno (Hiratatake Dai)
The complex political situation has also led to the confusion of the judiciary at the top of the dilemma. In his meeting with Tanye, we initially thought that he was complicit with politicians, presumably to protect his friends, which led to his own corruption, but then we found out that the opposite was true — they were complicit in the system, and the purpose was to break the system. Tanye clearly has no illusions about right-wing politics, is committed to pacifist ideals, and tries to expose institutionalized political corruption. Unable to thwart the rise of another neo-militarist regime (largely because his own wife was photographed attending a neo-Nazi rally), Tanano lamented japan's lack of press freedom, and when Mogami offered him more aid, he coldly interrupted Mogami, reminding him that he was also "a man in the system."
The highest law enforcement offenses are not so much the pursuit of justice as it is for personal revenge. He desperately insisted that Matsukura was guilty, and even began to fabricate the history of Matsukura's crime, while Okino, a serious and responsible rookie subordinate, felt conflicted and overwhelmed by the increasingly suspicious behavior of his superiors. It seems that the murder was not the work of Matsukura, and the real culprit may have been someone else. If the top uses this case to make Matsukura Fushifa confess guilt, it may be considered justice, but the real murderer is still at large. In the end, Mogami betrays his own justice and becomes the kind of "criminal" prosecutor he warns Okino in his cynical opening remarks not to become.
Suwabe (Matsushige Toyotomi)
In addition to this, Tsutomu links his crimes to the historical issue of the long-term injustice of his grandfather who accidentally survived the Battle of Imphal, in which he dreams of himself and Tanano as descendants of soldiers who refused to die for Japanese militarism, and return to the land of Purgatory known as the "Tanan Inn". The "White Bone Street" of the Imphal Battle also allyed him with the approachable gangster Suwabe (Matsushige Toyoshi), another source of temptation that prompts the top to turn to the dark side, and the ultimate question seems to be whether it is really okay to pursue its own justice in the face of corruption within the judicial system.
Sasuke (Yuriko Yoshitaka)
Okino, who represents the viewer's point of view, wants to oppose the top, but lacks the courage to resist – unlike his assistant Sasuke (Yukitaka Yuriko), who is also fighting injustice in her own way, but her way may not be very noble (basically out of egoism rather than altruism). "When a man dies, it's like something is broken," Matsukura said casually after admitting to killing the schoolgirl, which seems to reveal the film's nihilistic tendencies, pointing to a series of seemingly impossible social ills. When she was reporting to her superiors, she overheard a female prosecutor asking for a rape case and was rejected by her superiors, so she turned back at the moment she turned away, encouraging her to continue to pressure her case and support her in continuing to fight against the seemingly indestructible wall of indifference; the film begins with an understatement of how to deal with the elderly drivers in an aging society that is in line with the current reality, but compared to the cynical dark plot that follows, it seems to be a strange cold joke.
In the dark and pessimistic atmosphere of "The Sinner of the Prosecutor", as the moral bottom line continues to collapse, the whole tone becomes darker and darker, and there is almost no hope in sight, and only release can be found in the final roar of frustration.