I agree that Hirokazu Koreeda is 'top drawer' and this is not his best work.

If only the first half of this movie were as good as the last. The first half is too languid. Any perspective we might have isn't given until later. The result, without knowing what is to unfold, comes across as a sort of poverty porn. Granted that repeat viewings will alter this experience for the better, but a movie really should be able to function as a complete thing first time around.

I do disagree with you regarding the 'moral' nature of this work. Hirokazu Koreeda is imo the most subtle and nuanced director working today. There are no black and whites here, not even with the expository final half. We are never entirely certain what has really happened. What I was left with is some heartbreaking and mixed feelings. Yes, people have behaved badly, but these are not caricatures. They are complex and damaged. Culpable yet worthy of sympathy.

Fwiw, this is a far better movie that the multi award winning and acclaimed Parasite, which was neither nuanced, nor intelligent, nor moral.

I agree his work is all about shades of grey, I just think there was a bit of a stretch in this particular film to make this a realistic moral conundrum in order to engender the 'mixed feelings' that are typical of watching one of his films.

I still gave it a very strong score, but I think it maybe suffered from me watching it so close to the excellent TV series DNA (which has a broadly similar theme, executed, in my opinion, more effectively).

spoilers

My take is that Osamu and Nobuyo are grown up versions of Shota and Yuri. That is to say they were themselves abused children. Shota was found as a very young child, he has no memory of his parents, left alone in a car. Yuri's story we know. There is enough information about Osamu and Nobuyo for us to arrive at this conclusion. In their mind, even tho they know it's wrong, they really are rescuing the two youngsters. The scars of their own abuse are still with them; in Nobuyo's case: literally. Is it the case that Granny is the older version again? I don't know. But Hirokazu Koreeda seems to be suggesting that when harm is done to young children, the effects flow thru their entire lives and even into succeeding generations.

We don't know the true circumstances of the death of Granny's ex husband to be able to make any kind of moral judgement about it, but all of the other stuff, the shoplifting etc is just people trying to survive. Osamu for example is functionally illiterate. Are we really in a position to judge them?

If we can see Shota and Yuri as victims, at what point does our sympathy disappear for Osamu and Nobuyo? Should it?

The way Hirokazu Koreeda structures this film is clever. In the first half we follow this family only as unrepentant rogues. It is only in the last half that we are allowed to see what Osamu and Nobuyo really are. Hirokazu has tricked us into following our own rush to judgement; our inability to want to understand why or how these people came to be as they are. He has done what a good film maker should: made us question ourselves.

I still think how that first half plays out mars the film, even if I understand why it was done this way. That you had such a deep negative response to the characters in that first half that they couldn't be redeemed by the end confirms it for me, even if I do disagree with you when you suggest it is an unrealistic moral conundrum. For me it is because these are realistic moral questions that they resist clear or simple responses.

We can't dismiss the redemptive acts in the last part of the movie either. Nobuyo takes a 5 year stretch in prison to spare Osamu an even longer stretch, possibly life imprisonment. She also tells Shota how he might go about finding his family. The choice is now his. Osamu tells Shota not to call him 'Dad' and that they must say goodbye. This isn't a happy ending, but it is release, at least for these three characters. Importantly, there is no release for Yuri, who returns to her abusive parents. The final scene where she looks out over the balcony suggests both the possibility of freedom, and, ominously, that the cycle of abuse will, and in real life does, continue.

I think my views have been skewed by professional involvement in the legal system. From my tainted perspective:

• The family had some income through the mother and the sex worker which made it unclear to what extent shoplifting was actually required for survival. We do see theft of sweets which doesn't count as essential.
  
• It appears clear the false parents were investigated for the death, and typically a investigation would not take place unless there were suspicious circumstances.
• It is also impossible imagine a scenario where taking a child from a car and then abducting them could be a sympathetic act. Had the film portrayed that as the way the little girl was taken then in doubt any viewers would have any sympathy.
  

However, I was speaking today to a relative that recently watched this that doesn't have my hangups and prejudices. They were far more sympathetic to the shoplifters and bemoaned the girl being handed back. So for more general viewers it is entirely possible the film does entirely hit the mark and is another classic and the answer to my thread title is 'no'. They did prefer the mighty Like Father, Like Son too though.

I sensed there was an attempt to portray an sort of cycle of abuse / lack of parental care, but hadn't really fully formed it in my head. Thanks for pointing it out. On reflection I agree and think it does help the film a bit to think like that (even though Shota turned out to he a 'good kid' who could seemingly break the cycle).

There are things in this movie that aren't clear to me. That could be the director's intention. Perhaps one needs to live in Japan to know. Or it could just be me. For example, on the work truck going to the building site, another worker is complaining about someone who hadn't turned up. When he says he will kill him, Osamu looks startled. I won't run thru the several possibilities regarding this scene. But I think it's important that this is not just the sort of thing that happens a lot in Shoplifters, it something that is a hallmark of the director more generally.

I didn't get the impression that the family was a co-operative criminal endeavour. Things that were shoplifted were shared since 'they don't belong to anyone'. Two of the three working aged adults have regular jobs. The third is shown to work as well. We have no reason to think he doesn't take day work on a regular basis. Granny has a pension and the guilt money given to her by ex husband's family. If one wanted to depict a family of lazy, criminal degenerates, having a household with at least three legitimate incomes is an odd starting proposition. And people aren't putting their money into a collective pot the way they did in Carla Lane's Bread.

I believe that Hirokazu Koreeda has tricked us into a negative impression of these people by virtue of the poverty porn I mentioned earlier. These people are unclean, or have jobs that are unclean or unsavoury, and behave in ways that are are outside the norms not just of Japan, but of any developed society. We are also given a plethora of ambiguous scenarios in which the characters might have done something sinister, or might not have done anything wrong at all. He knows we will choose to think the worst of them. But the facts of their lives, the things that are clear, don't point to these negative responses at all, unless our moral framework is such that stealing a pack of noodles is an unforgiveable act.