Decide and chug along...

Revelations (Korean, 2025)

Director: Yeon Sang-ho

Although the ratings for this one were not very encouraging, the storyline made its viewers think.

No one knows the right course of action or what is contained in their recipe for good deeds. We merely drag our unfortunate selves along, clinging to straws, persuading ourselves that our actions are virtuous. No one can say whether our actions will lead to the best outcome in the grand scheme.

The movie explores what goes through the minds of three individuals who are somehow involved in the killing of a young girl and the kidnapping of another. There is a possible paedophile out on parole, wearing an ankle monitor. He seems to be following a young girl who enters a church. The paedophile follows into the church. The pastor notices him as a newcomer to the church and tries to woo him to join the congregation.

The pastor has a lot on his plate. He hopes to be promoted to a larger church, and he is troubled by his wife's infidelity.

One day, he forgot to pick up his son from school. Both he and his wife assume that their son has been kidnapped. The pastor suspects it must be the peculiar man with an ankle monitor. He hunts him down, believing he has killed him. Shortly thereafter, the wife informs them that a friend has collected their son.

The paedophile is also being followed by a police officer whose sister died after being kidnapped by him. Although she was released later, she took her own life due to social media shaming and PTSD.

The latter is assigned to investigate the paedophile after he went missing, having been assaulted by the pastor. Then it gets interesting…

So we end up with three people who want to do things beyond the bounds of decency but somehow find justifications for their actions.

The pastor wants to make sure that the paedophile is killed off before the police find him. The paedophile might say that the pastor tried to kill him. An arrest would destroy everything he had built for himself, work-wise and in his family life. He seriously sees signs from God that tell him he is on the right track. When he sees the clouds, an apparition resembling Mother Mary, and Jesus tells him to carry on, so he thinks, What else could he ask for?

The police officer thinks she failed the first time when her sister died. So, hunting down and killing the sadistic weirdo is justified. The question of her being a police officer does come into the equation. She sees images of her crying sister asking to seek revenge.

The criminal does not think he is doing anything wrong. All the voices in his head tell him so. His learned experience from his abusive childhood taught him so, too.

In the end, all three people have justifications to do all the things they want to do. While all these are happening, this church-going mother has lost her daughter. The pastor has to sit down with her to pray for the safe return of her child, who may have been abducted by the same criminal.

There is no secret formula for us to follow in this voyage of life. Every time the wind blows, we just hoist the sail, catch the wind and make intelligent guesses about where to navigate the boat. No self-proclaimed expert navigator can help you on this one.

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Could have done better?

Adolescence (2025)
Miniseries (4 episodes)

https://kinocheck.com/show/s23/adolescence

This miniseries has everyone buzzing. It is likely regarded as the most surreal creation to grace screens since 16-year-old Linda Blair portrayed Regan MacNeil in the 1973 film, The Exorcist. This is Netflix's latest blockbuster offering. The subject matter is undeniably dark, involving a 13-year-old student murdering a fellow female student as a result of cyberbullying. 

The miniseries features the filming of each episode in a single shot. While it may feel sluggish at times, this approach enhances the story's immersion as the case unfolds.

The essence of the story begins with a police raid to apprehend a teenager suspected of murdering another teenager. From that moment, it evolves into a police procedural drama as the legal system processes the accused. It showcases the overwhelming emotions experienced by everyone involved: the police officers, the supportive staff, the lawyer, the social worker, and the psychologists. For most of them, it is their first encounter with a young person embroiled in such a heinous crime. This situation is a devastating blow to the accused's parents and sister, who struggle to comprehend the idea that their beloved son could commit such an act.

As the series progresses, we learn more about the family dynamics and the atmosphere within the school. Much has changed since our own school days. Children now possess a private portal to the outside world, a realm filled with malevolence and deceit that threatens to ruin their futures. No matter how much strict discipline and guidance are instilled in them, they lead lives of their own. Cyberspace offers a secluded environment where anything goes. The thin line separating decency from insanity becomes increasingly blurred. What was once considered taboo has now gone mainstream. Children are vulnerable; they possess the illusion of agency and believe they can make their own choices. They misuse privacy for all the wrong reasons, constructing an impenetrable barrier around themselves. The adults' words of wisdom can sound harsh, digging them deeper into the abyss. With alien neologisms like incel (involuntary celibacy) culture, the manosphere featuring harmful gender ideologies, and themes such as the '80-20 rule', schoolchildren are lost in their quagmire of finding a place in their universe.

When the proverbial excrement hits the fan, everyone will be in for a shock. They will ask, "How did our innocent little child transform into such a monster?" Parents will start to question where they went wrong. Could they have done better? These parents faced greater hardships from their own upbringing and external pressures, yet they turned out fine. Why can't their offspring, with all the modern conveniences at their disposal, manage to be resilient and not easily triggered? No one seems to understand.

An interesting police drama!

Oru Nodi (Tamil, One Second, 2024)

Director: B Manivarman

https://www.jiosaavn.com/album/oru-nodi/9-Xa0ZWs2NU_

Even though the trailer depicts MS Bhaskar, the bald character actor who had graced many blockbusters recently, it was all a business gimmick. He only appears for a short while, and his character is killed off quite early in the movie, but he is shown in brief flashbacks. The rest of the film is completed by newbies and unfamiliar faces. Nevertheless, they all did a decent job. The story, however, could have been made more interesting. At one juncture, I wondered why the police were flip-flopping between one case and another as if they knew they were inter-related. 

To get the story straight, a forty-something lady shows up at a local police station to report her missing husband. Having watched so many police procedural dramas, one can guess what would follow. The lady is bombarded with wisecracks like he had run away from her torture or that he had gone on a drinking escapade. Just then, an inspector walks in to take charge. He gathers that the lady's husband, who went off with a large stash of cash to his debtors, could have been killed by a loan shark. 

In another scene, the body of a young lady is found dead along the village path. The plot twists when the autopsy confirms that she was in her early pregnancy. Police investigations suggest there was a stalker among her working colleagues who was quite determined to win her heart. But she had a boyfriend to complicate things. 

Meanwhile, the missing husband's mobile shows activity. The police spring into action. 

The rest of the police procedural drama has excellent narration. It is a cat-and-mouse story of clues, dead ends, new clues, and plot twists, leading to a finale that ties all the loose ends together. Not bad, not bad at all!

(P.S. Forget police brutality. When an Indian mentions that the police interrogated the suspect in their usual manner, it is a code that they beat the truth out of the victim. I thought this type of evidence had no legal standing!)

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Chopping the hands that feed?

Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez (2024)
Netflix miniseries

I learned a new word today: parricide. It is the act of killing one's parents, sometimes as a universal term to include murdering relatives.

It is not peculiar to our modern times by no stretch of the imagination. All through human civilisation, children have been killing the hands that fed them, directly or indirectly. Ancient Indian scriptures have numerous accounts of patricide. The Greeks, Babylonians and the Norse were not far behind. Even though the Mughal emperors had to kill to grasp the throne, the most they did was kill their siblings, like how Aurangzeb, the militarily savvy son of Shah Jahan, is said to have masterminded the brutal killing of his brother, Dara Shukoh, the tolerant one liked by the subjects. Aurangzeb did not kill Shah Jahan. He merely dethroned him and kept him in prison till he died.

King Asoka, who advocated the Middle Path of Buddhism, did not follow the path of passivity. He had to kill his 99 siblings to be the Supreme King. Recent studies suggest that Asoka was already a Buddhist before his victory in Kalinga and a change of heart towards nonviolence and banning animal slaughter.

In modern times, however, parents are killed off due to psychological or neurological reasons. Besides the occasional cases when an explanation can be elucidated, most despicable crimes escape reasoning. In 1968 Japan, in Tochigi, a daughter one day decided to put an end to her father's 15 years of rape which resulted in 11 pregnancies and three children. The Japanese law at that time advocated the death penalty as a blanket rule for parricide. After this case, the courts determined that each case needed to be handled individually.

In 1966, in Texas, an ex-marine went on a shooting rampage, killing his mother and many others. An autopsy revealed that he had an amygdala tumour that would explain his violent behaviour.

US figures show that at least six parricide events happen on their soil weekly. A large proportion of them involve youths and early adults. The often quoted reason for this is usually psychological reasons: parental abuse and control, or occasionally over money.

This miniseries narrates the case of Lyle and Erik Menendez, who both killed their parents in 1989 due to fear their parents were plotting to kill them. They also cited self-defence after enduring years of emotional, physical and sexual abuse. They show that everything was not as it seemed, as there was premeditation in their actions.

The duo currently serve life sentences.

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What goes on beneath the skull?

Mindhunter (Miniseries, S1-2, 19 episodes)
Director: David Flincher et al.

Growing up, being exposed to all those Hollywood movies and T.V. crime dramas, I used to wonder why was it that they were so many serial killers in America. Fast forward to the present, not necessarily much wiser; I think this type of crime is evenly distributed worldwide. As people become aware of such psychologically-related killings, more get exposed. It used to be that crimes and murders happened because of money, women, power and anger. Now we have another component to feed, our unexplainable inner desire to inflict pain, destroy and gloat in the joy of executing, planning, reminiscing, reliving the moment and being in the limelight dodging it. 

One reason why serial killer murders can be extensively investigated in the USA and Europe is the availability of funds and manpower. Even years after the cases have turned 'cold', there is a push from society to continue investigating these cases. The State has the finances to invest in newer forensic tools and mobilise resources as the situation warrants.

This miniseries was set in 1997 and the years after that. It was a time when the FBI was trying to make sense of the nonsensical killings that happened in the 1960s all through the 1970s. They had started a unit, Behavioural Science Unit (BSU), to look into these crimes and the killers' minds and make sense of it.

If one is expecting swashbuckling police-and-robbers car-chasing drama in this one, he will surely be disappointed. The series is quite cerebral, with a lot of talking and mental gymnastics. The characters are complex, and their life stories form part of the storytelling drama. It revolves around three FBI agents and a psychology professor. They interview convicted serial killers (the name that they came up with for these killers who kill in a particular pattern and leave specific signatures). The initial name was Sequential Killers. They were to build a rapport, map their mind and hopefully use their knowledge to catch future serial killers.

Good casting and makeup of serial killers' lookalike

Some criminals they interviewed include David Berkowitz (Son of Sam), Ed Kemper (Co-ed Killer), Ted Bundy and Charles. Manson (who influenced hippies to do his killings). In the second season, a good portion is spent investigating and catching the Atlanta Child Murders. In real life, the Atlanta murders happened in the 1979-81 bracket, involving up to 26 child murders and two adults. A person was sentenced for the murders of the two adults, but no one has ever been charged for the 26 black children. It has a sore point for the black population in Atlanta in the State of Georgia.

An engaging watch, 4.8/5. Even though everyone knows that the show was left hanging with the story of a man with an ADT uniform acting funny, probably itching to murder someone, begging to be told, the filmmakers have said they have no immediate plans for a third season because it is too expensive.

(P.S. A question often asked is whether criminals are born or are they nurtured? Are the parents to be blamed for their children's murderous malfeasance? Can upbringing mould a wrong design into a useful one? Children's lousy conduct has often strained husband-wife relationships. The desire to give the best for the children has frequently given just the opposite effects. Growing in the same environment, even siblings follow different trajectories.)

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Because the clairvoyant said so?

Zulfarhan Osman

A news report piqued my interest recently. The parents of a murdered college student prostrated in prayer right after the verdict was announced by the court of appeal that six accused would be hanged. Later, they told reporters they were showing their appreciation to the Almighty as justice was done. 

These types of news often leave me more perplexed than I already am. An overseeing Almighty who was cognisant of all the things going on with their loved one but procrastinated would typically get a cold shoulder. If He were a mere mortal, He would get a notice of professional negligence for napping on the job. His nemesis, the horned and tailed one, through His proxies in robes, would have a field day trying to act smart and reenact all the fraction of seconds when danger could have been averted. But deep inside, these Satan's representatives on Earth thrive on maladies like these. 

On one hand, we are products of the Original Sin, imperfect in every way and prone to being tempted to wrongdoings. However, we are still expected to bear the effects of our misdeeds. 

We are expected to forgive and forget like He forgives us every time we commit a sin. And we claim that the justice He metes is just. Yet we investigate, leave nothing unturned, exhume, and do a forensic investigation to the last foxhole to pin down the perpetrator and hurl the whole might of the law against him. We gain joy in seeing the accused squirm and hide in shame. We call this justice prevailed. 

On the other hand, we have an abundance of examples of the victims' families forgiving their aggressors. I covered this in another post. (See here.)

(P.S. For the curious, the abovementioned case happened in a military college in Kuala Lumpur. In 2017, six students, then 21, accused a 17-year-old junior of stealing a laptop computer. A seer had earlier identified the 17-year-old as the thief. The six students, together with 12 other friends, try to beat and torture the young boy to confess. They burnt his body and privates with hot iron. The perpetrators concealed him from the hostel warden, and delaying medical attention, the 17-year-old succumbed to his injuries two weeks later. The six accused were found guilty and sentenced to 18 years of jail. The accomplices were jailed for three years. The six were given sentences to hang at the Court of Appeal.)

(P.P.S. Alfred Hitchcock's 'Rope', based on an actual event, comes to mind. How two students of Chicago University in 1924 thought it was cool to snap the neck of a 14-year-old boy!)

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google.com, pub-8936739298367050, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0

When you gaze into the abyss...

Passing through darkness.  (Miniseries, E1-E12, Korean; 2023)
Director: Park Ba-ram

Over the centuries, humans have agreed on how they should live life. Compassion, tolerance, and acceptance have been the mantras to sail through the rough waves in the high seas of life. We respect the other with the adage 'Do not do unto others what you do not want others to do unto you' and think that should suffice for all to mind their own business and lead meaningful lives.

Life, as we know it, has been so easy. As if there is not enough of Nature's hostility towards over existence, there is danger from our own kind. Nature has dictated species protect their own kind. Still, violence and savagery are justified in the name of the continuity of species and territorial ambitions, which, in a way, also ensure the dissemination and dominance of species. Only in the human species do we humans kill another for the sheer pleasure of seeing someone die. Our inquisitive mind yearns to know what lies beyond the realm of life. Sending someone to the Otherside or just stepping momentarily into the gate of death and stepping back in gives some unbelievably enjoyable thrill and erotism.

We are stepping into the zone of dark, mind-bending psychological crimes. Some wonder if we are all inherently evil. Is that any truth that this is because we are all born out of the Original Sin, that we are all sinners and are at the Mercy of the Divine for Redemption?

Did 'civilisation' or living in communities mould us to behave in a particular manner? Numbers matter when we are exposed to dangers day in and day out in our early days of existence.

Remember our school days. Children who have not fully developed the inhibitory synapses of the frontal lobe say all the darnest. At the playgrounds, they can be pretty cruel, spewing venom with filters, leaving a spate of their schoolmates/playmates with developmental issues or social anxiety.

This Korean miniseries is not for the faint-hearted. It tells the tale of a criminal profiler and his team in the Behavioural Crime Analysis of the Seoul Metropolitan Police, who takes his work too seriously. Stemming from a near-drowning episode in his childhood, the detective develops the ability to empathise with both the victims and the perpetrators of the crimes he is tasked to solve.

This journey takes him and his dedicated team through a harrowing experience, questioning everything we try to pinpoint as the culprit to make someone turn to the dark side.

Is it the absence of a father figure as a child grows up? Is childhood trauma, sexual assault, corporal punishment, bullying or humiliation the culprit? Is the brain wiring to be blamed? What is at fault, Nature or Nurture? For every possible aggravating factor that may lure one to crime, many uproot themselves out of filth to be somebody. Is loneliness a precipitating factor? As Nietzsche said, 'If you gaze into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you!'

What about the people who often associate, investigate and peep into the lives of these vermins of society? Do those who fight with monsters should look into it so they do not become monsters? Scriptures say, 'You are the company you keep with'. A calf which hangs around a piglet would eventually feed on filth like hogs usually do, Amma used to say!

Before we say the cases are hyped to appease the viewers, the cases were reported by Korea's first criminal profiler, Kwon Il-yong and journalist-turned-author, Ko Na-mu.

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A case for abolition of jury system!

American Crime Story (Season 1; 2016)

The People v. O. J. Simpson

A 64-year-old man was imprisoned for a year after being caught stealing ten cans of sardines, two bottles of instant coffee powder, and some mouthwash. He was punished with a month's imprisonment.

In the justice system, an individual trusted with the coffers of the nation and its future, accused of amassing RM 42 million for his own needs, gets 12 years in prison. This happened after much public pressure, demonstrations, democratic change of government and taxpayers coughing out more money to finance what turned out to be a non-ending series of trials-within-trials. Because the ex-PM has all the money that can buy justice and legal minds, there is a high possibility that he will end up spending the rest of his royal-pardoned six years under house arrest, in the comfort of his loved ones and window to the outside world. That is the best justice system that money and influence can buy.

This is by no means confined to the third world or despotic governments. It is a worldwide phenomenon.

When the Malaysian courts discontinued the jury trial system in 1995, the naive me thought it was a step backwards for justice. After all, more impartiality is displayed when more people collectively decide, and developed countries, particularly the US, still use jury services. So they must be right, I thought.

The sensational trial of Mona Fandey et al. gruesomely murdering a state assemblyman created such mayhem that the courts thought that trial by jury should be abolished.

The merits and demerits have been in the legal fraternity's imagination for years. In India, the famous 1959 case of a naval officer, Nanavati, murdering his wife's lover created such a storm that the legal system felt the sensationalism surrounding the trial made the juries err on their judgement. The Bombay High Court later reversed the jury's decision of freeing him to impose life imprisonment.

The opponents of the jury system argue that the law is too complex for an average person to comprehend, who may also be swayed by emotion, prejudices and sentiments.

In this time and age, with the bane of knowledge and information, we humans are more confused than ever. Like in the immortalised lines from the movie 'A Few Good Men', the real question is, 'Can you handle the truth?'. With so much information, emotion, biases, innate bigotry and prejudices bottled up within us, how unflinching can be towards the real truth?

This proposition is laid bare in the case People of the Stae of California v. O. J. Simpson, which took place when the American sports icon, Simpson, was accused of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Smith, and her companion, Ron Goldman.

Cuba Gooding Jr as OJ, David Schwimmer as
Robert Kardashian, John Travolta as
Robert Shapiro. 

On the one hand, a black football player who beat the odds with his rags-to-riches story to be super rich, marry a white girl and live in a posh white, exclusive neighbourhood in LA. Some also looked at OJ as Uncle Tom, who had become a white, not as a black man. On the other hand, Nicole has reported domestic abuse in the relationship. When a blood-stained glove with OJ's and both victims' blood was found in the vicinity of the murder, the prosecution went all ballistic to charge him with double murder. They were clear in their approach. It was a case of domestic violence gone overboard.

From the get-go, the defence took a racial slunt towards the case. At a time in America when the police (like now) had the dubious reputation of being overtly racist in the way they handled their affairs. The Rodney King killing and the LA riots were They went along with the idea that the pieces of evidence were planted by bigoted police officers. To top it the lead defence lawyer, John Cochrane, drew in the support of the NAACP (North American Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, founded 1909). The defence tried to recruit as many black jurors as they could. In their mind, even though Simpson had turned into an Uncle Tom-like character with a white wife, country club and all, he was framed because he was black. That is where the defence was looking for sympathy.

With the fueling of fire by the extensive media, the trial became a competition between the whites and blacks of America. The whole trial became a media circus. First, it starts with Simpson engaging in a low-speed police car chase. Then, the trial was televised on Court TV, making people hooked on the twists and turns the case took. By the end of the nine months of trial, people were waiting outside the courthouse with bated breath to hear the jury decision. The jury took less than 4 hours to deliberate. Even though it provided a sound argument backed by scientific data, it was not enough. Simpson had apparently built a fan base among the jurors. They also voted along racial lines. The verdict would have been different if the jury was predominately white. The trial of the century ended with O. J. Simpson walking out a free man. A poll suggested almost 75% of white respondents believed OJ was guilty, whilst about only 25% of blacks thought he was guilty.

What is this about OJ's defence team being a dream team? I suppose it must be a group of morally corrupt individuals who mask themselves behind a law degree, unscrupulously stir sentiments, and churn out uncertainties in investigations and technicalities to create that element of reasonable doubt to crush the conviction. They promise the stars and the moon and charge an arm and a leg.

Robert Kardashian, the estranged husband of Kris Jenner (of the ''Keeping Up with the Kardashians' fame), was on the dream team. As a close friend and an attorney, he completed the whole trial convinced he was defending a guilty guy. To add fuel to the fire, 13 years after his acquittal in 2007, OJ was charged and later imprisoned for 33 years for armed robbery with a mostly white jury. So much for a fair trial and the adage that everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

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