I don't agree at all; I think the length of the movie was just fine, and I have no problem with the last few scenes.
However, I do have some comments to make about one thing: the police's obsession with killing Takeuchi. I thought that put a bit of a damper on it. When they were talking about how they didn't want to arrest him just yet because they specifically wanted to seek the death penalty for him. It would be one thing if it was just that they were really outraged about Takeuchi killing those people and that they didn't want him to get away with that, i.e., they needed to delay arresting him in order to lure him to the house and put him at the scene of the crime in order so that he could meet justice for that in addition to the kidnapping. But rather, it was like they just exploited those people's deaths in order to nab Takeuchi just because they wanted to kill him. It's a matter of where the emphasis was placed.
They also seemed completely indifferent to the death of the woman Takeuchi used as a guinea pig for the heroin. Worse, they let it happen even though they had figured out right beforehand that he was going to do that. Maybe they couldn't have stopped it in time, but they didn't even try, and there was no discussion of it whatsoever, no question raised about the ethics of the way they were going about doing this. I'd go so far as to say they were complicit in that woman's death because they knew it would happen and did nothing to stop it, so obsessed were they with their goal of getting the death penalty for Takeuchi. It was as if they regarded the woman as nothing, as something expendable, just because she was a junkie. I found that disturbing.
Of course this is just a movie, but I think it says something about the society in which it was produced. Which was of course the point of the movie; dealing with social issues in Japan. The police were so concerned with defending Gondo, the businessman, and getting him back his property, but they were utterly indifferent to the junkies, who were regarded as the dregs of society. I think this is one of the aspects of the movie's theme about class antagonism, the heaven for the rich and hell for the poor. The police weren't there to protect the poor. The poor were nothing. Such is the way it's always been in capitalist society, and not just in Japan.
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