Thursday, December 10, 2015

Sugihara Chiune / Persona non Grata movie review

I actually came across the name Sugihara Chiune some some time ago and ended up watching documentaries on youtube about this amazing person who saved countless lives.

Karasawa Toshiagi does a decent job as Sugihara. I'm pretty impressed by his English and understood most of his lines unlike Watanabe Ken.


He's got the cadence that many Japanese actors lack when speaking the language and he doesn't rush his lines which is very important cause most of it is in English.

Where the movie fails is the script. Way too ackward especially when presenting information to the audience like this Koyuki asking about the driver's family which came out of nowhere.

Yup. This aint your brother's Digimon.

The script has too much foreshadowing like Sugihara being so sure the US would get involved and Japan would lose. Finally I hated the subplot of Sugihara's ex who saved a professor who contributed to the bomb.

Basically the movie is more about Sugihara Chiune the myth, which is fine but the man is much more interesting.

You can't go wrong with a movie about saving Jews and the evil Nazis but the execution is just too ackward. Watchable for Karasawa Toshiagi's English but domentaries are better. Do look them up on youtube. I think the English name of the movie is Persona non Grata because Sugihara Chiune is a harder sell.

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