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Reviews
Noruwei no mori (2010)
Read the book, ignore the movie
The potential, oh the potential.
Essentially Anh Hung Tran, responsible for direction and the screenplay, did almost everything wrong you can do when you adapt a written work for the silver screen: The actors are good, the soundtrack is good (except for few moments of forced teary-eyes or mood-setting) and the sets are really good. So where does this go oh-so wrong? In the direction and screenplay. Almost every moment that defines the vibrant and corporeal characters of the book is not shown, skipped by or thrown at you in such a soulless way that either parts of characters are over-emphasized (Nagasawa being a jerk and a playboy, Watanabe talking weird) and the viewer can never build a connection to any of the characters. In a work that's character-driven, that's bad. What's worse is trying to make it plot-driven, leaving in every single sex scene but removing their meanings, too. What's horrible is the attempt to leave in bits and pieces of the characterization in a way that renders every character two-dimensional and as a soulless and mindless husk. I've seen 2D movies with more three-dimensional characters than this horrible attempt.
Don't waste your time or money. Give a hook, read the book.