Review of I Just Didn't Do It

New Film Finds Fault with Japanese Legal System... For Over Two Hours

by Kirk Faulkner 

When Masayuki Suo addressed the audience at the New York Film Festival premier of "I Just Didn't Do It", he described his new film as a mixture of a Kafka story and an episode of Law and Order. After watching the 143 minute procedural drama about an innocent man trapped in an oppressive justice system that equally eschews justice and reason, Suo's description seems gravely apt. (Cue Law and Order BUM BUM!) The film begins with Teppei Kanneko (Ryo Kase) rushing to make a crowded Tokyo train. He manages to wedge himself Suddenly he is being accused by a young girl of '"groping", an apparently serious and growing problem in Japan. What follows is a harsh look at a system that seems completely based on the idea that you are guilty until you can be proven innocent beyond any reasonable (or unreasonable) doubt. Teppei is given every chance to admit his guilt but it is his insistence of his innocence (see the film's title) that thrusts him into the more Kafka-esque than Kafka world the film dissects over its 2+ hours. Teppei’s situation is not completely hopeless. His mother and friend do everything they can on the outside to try and help. They enlist the services of a lawyer who is at first reluctant to help some one who is even possibly guilty of the disgusting crime. The three go on a desperate search to find the single witness who disappears shortly after telling officials of Teppei’s innocence. But any beacon of hope is dimmed to no more than a shimmer in the dense fog of the Japanese legal system. As the legal machine becomes more and more determined to prove his guilt, so does Teppei become more determined to prove his innocence. It becomes a true test of one man’s resolve to protect his reputation in spite of all odds. Suo doesn't gloss over a single moment of the 15-part trial. Early on a police officer sites the country’s 99.9% conviction rate of gropers, a number that almost all members of the judicial force seem bent on maintaining. Judges, lawyers, even the cops, seem so invested in a guilty verdict that little room is left for truth. "I Just Didn't Do It" recalls some of the social commentary of Suo's last film, the light hearted comedy "Shall We Dance", but there the similarities stop. The film is a static procedural where the director makes the audience feel the mind numbing frustration of the protagonist at every turn. “I Just Didn’t Do It” is a devastating portrayal of an industrial country's idea of justice. After watching the film one can’t help but wonder if this dearth of habeas corpus is singular only to the Japanese system or if perhaps our own judicial porch is in similar disarray. At the very least, anyone watching the film will think twice before groping on a Japanese commuter train. That's for damned sure.

Posted on 11/07/07 by: FC Scribes 11:21 AM

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