MovieChat Forums > Supai Zoruge (2003) Discussion > My problems with the film (Spoiler Inclu...

My problems with the film (Spoiler Included)

posted 21 years ago by dballred
3 replies | jump to latest

I liked Spy Sorge because it provided a rare look of Pre-war Japan, but I did have a few problems with it. I would appreciate input from Japanese or other viewers who saw this.

1. I thought the treatment of Japan's behavior in China was whitewashed. The crowd scene in the streets with the military depicted a level of restraint I had not heard of.

2. Is it just me, or wasn't the use of CGI to depict things such as tanks and even ordinary passenger vehicles overdone? Aren't there any vintage automobiles in the country?

3. Why did they decide that all non-Japanese dialog was to be conducted in English? While it made my job as a member of the audience a bit easier, it tended to deflate the realism a bit.

4. (Spoiler) The only real brutality shown in the film was by the police who interrogated the reporter and Dr Sorge in the beginning. In the end, I would have to say the brutality was--in a way--justified. The reporter, after all, was a bona fide traitor--even in my eyes. The spy was a spy, after all, and Japan was surounded by potentially hostile forces on all sides. Was this an apologetic look at the brutality that existed for real? I really didn't feel any sympathy for any of the characters who ended up on the wrong side of the law.

[–] cwinff 20 years ago

Hello, dballred. I have been living in Japan for a long time, and was born here also. I am also rather familiar with the era, so here are my comments:
(1) This has been debated for some time, but there are scholarly works that tend to support this. Please check the Nanking Incident on the net. There is a Japanese professor of History that has documentation.
(2) Most autos of the era were scrapped after the war. The tank was phony as heck.
(3) I agree: to have Germans speak in English and such was inane.
(4) Dr. Sorge, as a respected foreign national, was treated accordingly. The reporter would have been brutalized a lot more in reality.

The acting was poor, because a lot of the parts were done with sub-standard
actors/actresses. For examplr, Riona Hazuki is just terrible, and Koyuki is even worse. What goes for acting on their parts is considered normal for personalities, but not for bona-fide thespians.

[–] UberNoodle 18 years ago

I am not diminishing Japan's WW2 involvement, but when will the rest of the world get off its high horse and just let Japan and Asia sort out their history and scars on their own. I think finger pointing is hypocritical when it is over war, especially when a heck of a lot of fingers have been pointed towards the west for its own rose tinted portrayal of its own history and role in the international arena. Whether it is Nangking, or the nuclear destruction of two major cities, war , death and human depravity are indivisible.

[–] Hiverhythm 15 years ago

I'd say that's a good counter point by Killion.

Besides that, the atrocities committed by Japanese military were committed by the Kwantung army, which was almost entirely destroyed by Soviet forces in 1939.

This movie has a rare subject of a Russian spy, so I don't really take offense that it's not at the same time an expose on where history took Japan.