“Faceless” is “I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang” or just “The Fugitive” for Japan’s current “Seijin no Hi” generation. The conceit is so clever that the clock is probably already ticking on a Hollywood version of this.

A young man of about 21 violently lunges and lashes and bashes his way out of prison, faking bloody vomit so that he can bust out of the guarded ambulance on the ride to the hospital.

Kaburagi (Ryûsei Yokohama) was convicted of an “In Cold Blood” mass killing as a teen. And now this “monster” is on the loose. A nationwide manhunt is underway. Only the intrepid police detective Matanuki (Takayuki Yamada) can bring him in, but the days and weeks tick by with this menace still on the loose.

There are these witnesses — a couple of young women (Riho Yoshioka, Anna Yamada), a bleached blond young man (Shintarô Morimoto) and others — who talk about the kid’s considerate side, his sensitivity.

When it turns out they’re being interviewed later in the narrative, expressing doubts about Kaburagi — whom they knew as Benzo, Nasu, etc. — and his guilt in a crime and punishment, when we’ve heard a police chief suggest “make an example of him,” we and they wonder if the guy’s been railroaded by a “system” too lazy to “fully investigate.”

Those being interviewed about their encounters with Kaburagi question “what justice is.”

Because the blond, orphaned construction worker Jump (Morimoto) got hurt on the job, and the mop-topped loner known to him as Benzo was the only one who stood up to their bullying boss, insisting a workman’s comp claim be filed.

“I just call out injustice when I see it,” Benzo tells him, in Japanese with English subtitles.

Online editor Ando (Yoshioka) notes the writer/reporter Nasu has a gift for writing and a talent for generating clicks on her company’s news website. She takes note of his inexperience of the world, his haunted look and his tears at watching a TV melodrama and suggests “You never know what somebody’s going through.” That goes for her, too. Her father is a lawyer entangled in a possible legal injustice himself.

Each confesses they figured out their new acquaintance wasn’t really right handed — bad with chopsticks — or didn’t really glasses. But they’re convinced he could not be capable of such a crime.

The viewer, however, is allowed to doubt their judgement. We sense what he’s capable of and wonder if he’s the avenging sort. When trapped, he’s like a mad dog — wrenching and writhing, wild-eyed with terror, breathlessly fleeing.

The intrigues are fairly superficial, as are the snap “He didn’t do it!” judgements from his sometimes smitten but always impressed peers.

But director and co-writer Michito Fujii keeps “Faceless” (“Shoutai” in Japanese) moving just fast (not that fast at all) enough so that we don’t mind the soap opera melodrama and swooning over a skinny hunk in assorted haircuts — many of them stylishly floppy.

And Yokohama gives us just enough of the damaged kid underneath that boy band veneer to keep the kid a mystery. For a while, anyway.

Rating: TV-14, violence

Cast: Ryûsei Yokohama, Riho Yoshioka, Shintarô Morimoto, Anna Yamada and Takayuki Yamada

Credits: Directed by Michihito Fujii, scripted by Michihito Fujii and Kazuhisa Kotera. A Neflix release.

Running time: 1:59