Les Miserables (2019)

Les Miserables 2019 / レ・ミゼラブル 2019 /

This feature drama, produced to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Fuji TV, is an adaptation of Victor Hugo's classic masterpiece Les Miserables set in the 1990s in Japan. In Kobe in 1993, Jun Baba gets taken to a juvenile prison due to a killing of a man who cheated his mother out of all her money in self-defense. One day, he hears that his younger brother, who has been desperately ill, is in a critical condition and breaks out. However, he finds out his brother is already dead. In the depth of despair, he tries to kill himself but is saved by a man who runs a self-support facility. He begins to live at the place, and befriends with Takumi Watanabe aspiring to be a lawyer. In 1995, the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake hits and their friendship comes to an end. Crushed under the debris, Takumi persuades Jun to live his life instead. Jun swears to live on assuming Takumi's identity. Meanwhile, Ryosuke Saito, the son of the man that Jun has killed, finds his life turns dramatically. Bound together by fate, the two meet in Tokyo in 2004, as a lawyer and a police detective. Getting along with each other, Ryosuke finds out that Takumi is actually Jun, his father's murderer. Ryosuke tries but fails to catch Jun, and the story follows Jun living a hidden life in the countryside of Fukushima in 2019. The long journey of the two men, as a fugitive and a pursuer, is about to end here. With atonement and forgiveness as its themes, this story illuminates the lives of some seventeen people, focusing on the two men who lived through these turbulent 30 years.