Comic Magazine

I saw this movie once in the late 80s and it has stuck with me. I keep looking to see if anyone is going to release it on video or DVD, but so far no one has.

It is the story of a serious journalist stuck on the show biz beat for a Japanese television network. In one scene as he sits in a toilet stall he hears two of his more successful colleagues ridiculing him for his hopeless admiration of Woodward and Bernstein. When he finally discovers a truly big story, about a plot by a greedy entrepreneur to swindle elderly pensioners with a gold futures scam, no one takes him seriously. In the violent climax he finds himself wounded when he gets in the way after local thugs decide to take the law into their own hands and murder the swindler. Suddenly, the ignored and ridiculed journalist becomes a story himself and is the focus of an all-too-hooked-on-gratuitous-gore press corps. "I don't speak f***ing Japanese!" He declares (in English, no less) and turns away.

A surprising import and a very good movie.

I watched it nearly ten years ago. I liked the role of Japanese reporter Kinemari stared by Yuya Uchida. The real life is sometimes even funnier, than the race for glory and money.