Wow! Such a good movie.

Some things I liked some I did not.

not as good as all the hype

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

All the Imamura's I've seen have that one moment. A moment which becomes a cinematic emblem, a token of memory that not only stays in the mind but starts to typify everything. Needless to say, there is a moment like that in this film, and without giving away too much, it involves a transition between scenes and a staircase. The simplest of moments, but the profoundest all the same, where home and the road meet, the lost and the forgotten. It's heartbreakingly beautiful in its impact as it shows the bittersweet death of hope in life that has turned into a vacuum of cessation and a mere series of wandering, swerving accidents.As for Ken Ogata's Iwao, he is a convincing characterization, mundane enough to be completely ordinary, charismatic enough to enable him to transform himself into someone completely unpredictable in his disconnect and for us to walk the distance with him. The genre tends to overemphasize the latter quality – the unique, the mysterious, the alluring. Imamura's way of seeing the world strikes a successful balance between the two extremes. Iwao is, as said, just like anyone else, but still like no one else. He is formed as lacking in perceivable depth. He does, and is almost entirely void of theatrical reaction. This way we invest in and project our preconceptions into the character. Sure, that's the meme in depicting sociopaths, but Imamura is able to use this wisely and without gloating.The Masters of Cinema have released this on Blu-ray (region B). It's a rare miss for them as it has lots of combing, and I think I'll sit this one out and wait for the possible Criterion upgrade (although I prefer the colour grading of the MoC master to that of the Criterion).It seems that IMDb now displays my vote for this title; it appeared after I made a minor edit on the text. I'm not partial to it, since it guides the reader's perception on the writer's opinion often more than the text itself, but there's nothing I can do about it at the moment.

Vengeance is Mine is a character study which explores the mind of a psychopath. Iawo Enokizu is singing in the back of a police car while being transported by detectives. He complains about his future hanging for the five murders he has committed. while escorted from the car, the cops shield him from an angry mob attack.Flashbacks take us to two separate crime scenes where the victim had been stabbed to death. At interrogation, the killer laughs and refuses to cooperate with the investigation.Two men are driving Iawo, and when they reach their destination, he beats the first one to death with a hammer and then stabs the second guy with a knife, taking money and calmly walking away.Police interview ex-girlfriends and one of them says she threatened him with a stiletto which he stole from her, and the second, a former stripper, shows them a small crucifix on a chain given to her as a gift by Enozizu.Iawo is with his dad at about seven in another flashback, and the Japanese army demands that their boats be handed over to the military for the war efforts. They first refuse but after threats, turn over the boats while pointing out the strong anti Catholic environment in Japan.The problem child first conviction is for stealing a jeep from the American forces and after two years in jail his father tells him that he must get married and so he finds a Buddhist girl who converts to their religion and they have two daughters. He continues his bad ways, at one point pretending to be a lawyer and stealing bond money from a woman and other con games send him back to prison. While incarcerated, his wife Kazuko is in a hot bath with her father in law where she gives the old man a back rub. He reciprocates by massaging her and she grabs his hands and places them on her ample breasts; very inappropriate behavior. The sexual tension continues throughout the story.After release from the pokey, Mr. con man pretends to be a college professor and finds an inn which doubles as a brothel being run by a mother and daughter. He asks for a companion for the night and he is served. Eventually the daughter falls for him and they begin a relationship. More murder and mayhem occur, courtesy of our hero, and as the law close in he is finally recognized due to his wanted poster being all over the country.The new love interest visits him in Tokyo, and they do not live happily ever after. At the last interview with detectives, he finally admits to the murders and his father informs him that he has been excommunicated from the Catholic Church. The sentence is inevitable, and the last scene with his dad and his wife is a realistic and tragic end for this long and insightful look at the human condition.

Jesus, the things people will say in comments. You'd think this film was some kind of tour de force of violence and depravity. Let me tell you what you are actually getting if you sit down to watch this.Sociopath guy gets arrested, then we have a flashback to his messed up childhood, then fast forward to shortly before he gets arrested, where the majority of the story takes place. During this time, he moves from one place to another to evade police, meets people, scams them, kills them, moves on. When he's not doing that, he is crawling in awkward positions around small indoor spaces.The rest of the time is spent watching characters display entirely inappropriate reactions to the things taking place. For example, the police discuss his crimes with him in the interrogation room without so much as batting an eyelid at his confessions. His ex-wife is in love with the guy's father who is old enough you hardly believe he can get it up.If you can buy all that, and if you think this kind of thing deserves a whopping two and a half hours of your time, enjoy. Otherwise, go see "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer."My God, the things people will say here... Look, whoever is in awe of this film is probably some kind of aficionado of Japanese cinema. If you do not fall in that category and are instead someone looking for some entertainment that will keep your interest throughout two hours and twenty minutes, do yourself a favor and leave this film be.

The title leaves an assumed puzzle that is never solved. I mean, vengeance for what? This characterization of a savage serial killer implies a cold-blooded compulsion lacking incentive, stimulus, reason or distress. Different from other socially anthropological movies in the true crime genus, it has no Freudian commentary for everything and shows us straight depravity, heartless and inaccessible. A few scenes from the killer's boyhood feel almost like sardonic breakdowns of how any explanation would be implausible. We are made conscious how much we yearn for such stories to define their vileness.This richly visual artistic examination unravels unsuspectingly. We see a murderous sociopath who kills two money lenders in a gory opening scene. Then flashbacks are unified with his escape through Japan as his hopeless upbringing and the buildup of his sinister, sociopathic way are interpreted. Monstrous and libidinously barbaric, his agitation boils during an earlier stay in prison as he imagines his wife is having sex with his father. When on the run from the police, his bizarre sexual life and violent nature are yet unraveled in a succession of consuming action. He is played by the powerful actor Ken Ogata, who uses two major demonstrative modes, fury and detachment. Sometimes he can be eloquent and even charismatic, but merely to the advantage of sex, theft or murder. His face camouflages perhaps nothing.At the very beginning, we see Ogata in the back of a police car, after his arrest. He has been the case of a nationwide pursuit for months, his photograph everywhere. Ogata sings tunes, contemplates the day of his hanging, declines to accommodate the questions of the police. His view is that committed the crimes, his death is justified, all is as it should be. The first murder, the two lenders, is committed with lots of struggle, the victim fighting back like crazy, our killer nearly overpowered, blood everywhere. He leads the second man to the same site, kills him too, washes up and changes, composed and dispassionate.Imamura's absorbingly stylized murder epic will show all of his murders, but only that elaborately just one other time. Imamura knows that when you introduce violence, it can later keep its effect merely with the summoning its thought. With another murder, he makes friends, then murders him, shuts him into a cupboard in the victim's own apartment and then explodes with rage when he can't find the can opener. He wasn't enraged by his victim, but the can opener makes him desperate because he can't kill it.There are subplots concerning two families, Ogata's and another a mother and daughter in whose lodge he lies low, involving the depravity of both sets of horrifying parents and the demoralization of the children. Ogata's marriage is comatose, his mother is hospitalized, and there has long been an intense gravitation between his wife and his father. While they graze sex during a hot bath, they counteract because of their obsessive Catholic values which somehow do not defy the father to persuade a friend to have sex with her. She opposes, until the man tells her he has the permission of her father-in-law. The lodge where our killer hides is run basically as a whorehouse, and the mother is an ex-convict, released after a sentence for murder. The daughter schedules call girls for the lodgers, and is herself the mistress of a businessman who pays the rent. The two women are decidedly deadpan about this set-up, and it leads to some odd dialogue.This extensive, dubious and apparently true story amasses formidable energy. Everyday human values are deducted from all the major characters, and that is demonstrated above all in two scenes that disturbed me far beyond any of Ogata's deeds. Once when it is suggested that his father and wife torture and kill a dog for biting her, and again when the businessman rapes the crying, begging innkeeping daughter, with Ogata and the mother in the next room. Ogata seems impassive, rivets on a dripping faucet, tightens it and then at last grabs a knife, but the mother stops him. Having been filled with explosive tension throughout the scene, I was baffled by this frustrating move, but then I realized she does not want to lose the man's rent money.What is most alarming about Ogata's character is that he has no conscience at all about his murders. It is just his nature to kill. Does he have such hatred for life that he is killing unoffending passers-by just to be hanged by the state? Surely the innkeeper's daughter hasn't recognized any inference that he loves, likes her or even regards that she's alive. Perhaps she's also like an insect. I mean, he never says one congenial sentence towards her, actually communicating largely in laconic aphorisms.As a stylist, Imamura is a virtuoso, his camera often a little above eye level, diminishing his characters, maybe manifesting them as segmented, already deconstructed samples. In other shots, he shoots from low angles with deep-focus environments, as in the scene where Ogata seethes in the kitchen while the daughter is raped, when the dripping faucet is framed and lit to poke at his attention. Throughout the murders, his camera restrains its breadth, not moving, at one point shooting straight down. He does not delight in shock cuts or sudden whip-pans. His camera beholds impartially. It's rare to find movies that really deflect your thinking and make you suffer to fulfillment. This film is a definite shock, and enlightening when it comes to the judgment and expectations of characters.