The Journalist

The conspiracies never spiral into absurdity and the climactic court scenes and come-uppances still hit home. But it remains a strange amalgam of taut thriller and bizarre panto, addictive and believable when Yonekura is on screen, a little silly when some of the other actors are fabricating documents while saying “but this is… fabrication of documents!!!”

This is wish fulfilment, based on the question that nags us most when we read about corruption and cover-ups: how can the people who did this sleep at night? We would love to see them unable to do so – and The Journalist indulges that desire. But it does so effectively, setting up simple stories about the emotional fallout of institutional cruelty to remind us what is at stake.

We’re giving a cautious recommendation to The Journalist because we think writer Michihito Fujii has established the bones of a good story. But it needs to avoid getting bogged down in the details of the corruption and just get down to the business of examining everyone’s motivations in the scandal.