This is uncommon
indeed in Hollywood, where characters who cross over to the dark side are held responsible
for their choice. But Yoshida, who wrote the script based on Furuya Minoru’s
manga of the same title, questions whether ‘choice’ exists when the strong crush the weak
– and the weak go homicidally mad.
The film begins, however, as a smart observational comedy about two losers on society’s
margins. One is Okada (Hamada Gaku), a mousy guy working as building cleaner.
The
other is his pudgy, wild-haired colleague Ando (Muro Tsuyoshi), who talks robotically but
speaks honestly. He is, he tells Okada one day, in love with a cute server at a nearby coffee
shop, but has yet to breathe a word to her.
When Okada go with Ando to check her out, he tells his co-worker upfront that “She’s too
young and pretty for you.”
Ando, however, is not to be deterred and, with Okada’s reluctant
assistance, not only makes the acquaintance of Yuka (Satsukawa Aimi), but wangles a
double date with her and a sharp-tongued human tank of a friend, Ai, who promptly sizes
up both Okada and Ando as losers.
So far, so good, as scene after crisply directed scene unfolds with a winning combination
of warmth and bite.
But it quickly becomes apparent that Hime-Anole is going to be more
than another slacker sitcom. Ando is paranoid about the presence of a brooding, blondehaired
coffee shop patron he tells Okada is a stalker.
Okada, however, recognizes him as
Morita (Morita Go), a former high school classmate and, at Ando’s urging, timidly asks
him about Yuka.
Here is where the film makes a sharp, if well-prepared, turn from light comedy to dark
thriller.
As played by a gaunt-looking and scarily intense Morita Go, a member of the J-pop
ensemble V-6, Morita reveals himself to be more than just a rival for Yuka’s affections.
He
is a serial killer who, as his murderous past is revealed, becomes dangerously deranged. And
Okada, who was once his only friend, witnessed the merciless bullying that pushed him
over the edge.
There’s little in the film’s initial set-up to signal this turn of events, but it hits home the
harder since it seems so unexpected.
And, as we finally see, it is no arbitrary plot turn. Instead
it grows organically from the film’s central theme: Human beings are capable of both
love and hate, good and evil – and to cross the line from the former to the latter can be more
of a fate than a choice.
This is not to say that Morita is simply to be pitied.
His crimes are appalling – and the film
thoroughly deserves its R-15 rating in Japan. But it also shows another, more human side to
his character – which make his inhuman treatment at the hands of his one-time classmates
all the more unforgivable. In crushing the weak, they create a monster.
And Okada’s sin? Silence, in the name of survival. But, as the always excellent Hamada
Gaku shows in a performance funny and tender, he is not entirely contemptible.
Instead,
he finds love and even a measure of courage and compassion. That’s not a saint – but, for
most of us, good enough.