Here's a topic that seems tailor-made for the cinema: in 1977 in Japan, a young girl is kidnapped on her way home from school. Her parents think the worst, but they keep hoping she'll return to them. But twenty years pass, and they've moved on with their lives, until they hear the extraordinary truth: North Korean spies kidnapped possibly hundreds of Japanese men and women in the late 1970s and early 1980s, taking them back to North Korea and forcing them to train Korean spies. Their daughter, Megumi Yokota, was one of the abductees. Thanks to the efforts of a crusading journalist and a North Korean defectee, the story slowly comes out. Her parents and the parents of other abductees launch an effort to get the Japanese government, on the verge of normalizing relations with North Korea, to do something about returning the kidnap victims.

Filmmakers Patty Kim and Chris Sheridan concentrate on Megumi's parents and sees much of the action through their eyes: the disappointments that seem to come with every revelation, and especially the great toll their crusade has taken on their family (notably, one of Megumi's brothers is interviewed, but not the other). In one of the most revealing moments, Megumi's mother can't remember whether her daughter had dimples or not. The intense focus on Megumi's parents, coupled with their overwhelming desire to amp up the suspense, limits the filmmakers' ability to do good journalism. Why didn't they interview any of the abductees who returned from North Korea? Why didn't they question the shocking (indeed, to me it was the most shocking thing about the film) apology the returning abductees offered their families? "Sorry for making you worry for so long." Sorry for being a victim. I was struck by the thought that these people, some of whom have lived in North Korea for more than half their lives, would make for a compelling documentary. What was it like for them to return as strangers to families and friends who've been obsessing over the return of someone who doesn't exist anymore, who has been through so much that they're likely to feel like aliens? There's ample room for a real documentary to dig into this, but the filmmakers are strangely uninterested; their intense focus on Megumi's family has blinded them to everyone else.

So you have a 20-year-old mystery, a pair of determined and grieving parents, international intrigue, crusading journalists, spies and secret training programs, and Kim Jong-il in a brown jumpsuit. It seems difficult to imagine how one could go wrong. However, a good, even a great, topic doesn't guarantee a great film. The filmmakers make liberal use of artificial, clumsy, suspense-amping techniques, including, but by no means limited to, heavy manipulation of film stock (artificial scratches abound), poorly conceived and tasteless reenactments, and the kind of dramatic pauses with crashing music (or worse, with sudden silence) that are more the modus operandi of sensationalistic true-crime shows. But of all the technical missteps, nothing is worse than during the revelation of which abductees died during their captivity, when they use a loooong pause before revealing Megumi's fate. It's fake, it's manipulative, it's insulting to everyone involved, and I really wanted to throw something at the screen or storm out of the theater. But I wanted to know how things turned out, which is a reflection on the story, not on the film. This topic deserved better than America's Most Wanted.

—April 11, 2007