Reviews & Ratings for
A Fugitive from the Past More at IMDbPro »Kiga kaikyô (original title)

20 out of 21 people found the following review useful:
My #1 Japanese film of all time, 9 August 2003

Author: calvinlynn

Perhaps "Kiga kaikyo" (Tomu Uchida, 1963), also known as "Fugitive from the Past" or "Strait of Hunger" (the original japanese title), is the most underrated japanese film in western audience. It's incredible to find that it has only 5 votes on IMDb (including mine).

"Strait of Hunger" is a dark, twisted crime drama, yet remains subtle emotion and social criticism themes inside. The characters are complex and intriguing, and the view angle of 1950s Japanese society is wide and enlightened with an epical story telling. The black and white cinematography is astoundingly fabulous, especially the billowy ocean under the hurricane, which gives the audience indelible impression. Tomu Uchida is one of the greatest film makers (if not the greatest) living in Japan and this film is a timeless masterpiece. It is my all time #1 japanese film and I strongly recommend this to everyone.

6 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
One of the great narratives of bad karma, hell, of cinema, 19 March 2011

Author: chaos-rampant from Greece

We're beating a dead horse if we begin to lament another lost treasure, another overlooked Japanese director who's yet to receive his dues. Uchida will have to queue up in a humongous line. The film canon, as we know it, as it's being taught to college kids in film classes, is written from a Western perspective and is so incomplete as to be near useless. It's safe to say we're living in the Dark Ages of cinema, in the negative time of ignorance, and that 100 years from now Straits of Hunger will feature prominently in lists of the epochal narrative films of the previous century. We may choose to keep honoring the Colombuses and pretend we invented paper or gunpowder, but film history will invariably reveal the pioneers.

But that's a matter of concern for the historian, the librarian of cinema who will undertake the thankless task of restoring in the ledgers some measure of order. What do we get from the discovery of such a film now, as mortals with a remote? On one hand it's the perfect illustration of a narrative cinema en route to modernism, from Kurosawa to Imamura, how it's concurrent with New Wave expression, aware of it but not ready for it. The illustration is transparent when the image turns negative in crucial scenes, it feels like we're standing on a brink of expression (one of many in this film).

This is mere technicality though, dry academic discourse. If we're so inclined, we can find measures of this in Uchida's previous films. The man was of Mizoguchi's generation but he had an eye for abstraction. We can play back to back the finale of Killing in Yoshiwara and Sword of Doom and see what we get, how the point of view shifts to within, how the external turmoil becomes a lucid image of a state of mind.

What really matters to me here though is, as Donald Richie describes it, the "working out of karma". It's become a tortured term over the years but we need to understand what karma is not. It's not fate, though it speaks of fatalism. It doesn't emanate from above, we are the agents. Translated from sanskrit (or pali) it means "action". Our past actions have brought us here, our present actions determine our future. Good or bad, karma sets in motion the cycle of suffering that binds all beings to this earthly prison.

This is a spiritual film then, but how does it pertain to some primal principle of the soul? The story of bad karma is common in Japanese lore, a man finds himself haunted by guilt demons of the mind for the misdeeds of the past. Usually in this type of film we're brought to the brink of an abyss, from there we can gaze below to the existential void. Most films daren't go further (that is, if we accept there is somewhere to go from there) but it's enough for me to experience this, it's a first awareness. Our reward is that view.

Straits of Hunger presents a complexity that opens up a yawning chasm when we come to stand at that brink.

Our man is unaware of wrongdoing until it's too late. Because no one would believe his story of how he didn't murder anyone to get ahold of so much money, he keeps it. The dawn of his bad karma comes from a punishing moral conundrum, from circumstances outside his control. Our protagonist gets to choose, a life in prison or a life of guilt. I like that we're watching the hapless fallguy dance to the cosmic tune of an indifferent god (more precisely, no god), but we should keep in mind this is not a noir text.

What's of essence here, is the acceptance of suffering. Our protagonist needs to atone for something he didn't want to be born into, a murderous scheme with two ex-convicts of which he was unaware. As we all do. Suffering then, like the first cry of the newborn, is a natural, inate, response to existence. Brilliant! I love how Uchida makes cinema out of that bad karma.

In a similar text, the Daibosatsu Toge, famously adapted by Kihachi Okamoto in '66 and Uchida himself in '71, the setting of the visitation is, of course, The Great Boddhisatva Pass (that is, from where the boddhisatvas pass or cross into this world, enlightened beings who choose to remain in the cycle of life and suffering to assist others in their path). Here it's a furious storm, a cataclysm.

For the first apparition of guilt, Uchida summons into the stage the portents of doom, rain and lightnings rolling down Mt. Fear, and a prostitute, the harbringer almost ceremonially covered in a blanket, mockingly bellows "there's no path out of hell". In a later scene he repeats the setup, to make a connection, but this time there is murder. What exists in the mind, will find its way out.

Inbetween, Uchida gives us one of the most vivid chronicles of life in postwar Japan to this day. The poverty and moral desperation of life in the slums and the black market, the Yankee resentment and political upheaval, but also a kind of hopeful anticipation for change. The contrast is subtle, and in the next segment we see our raggedy protagonist is now a successful businessman.

Two instances in the film fascinate me a lot, when the cop recites the sutra for the dead. The first time is nondescript, but when we hear it again in the finale we know. It foreshadows. And more, the cop knows the sutras better than a monk (as a monk tells him), the teachings, but he's not liberated. Ultimately no one is in the film, and the cycle of suffering goes on. This is one of the great Buddhist films for me.

8 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
all that and a bag of chips, 19 January 2006

Author: dailies

This just ran at MoMA's extraordinary survey of films from the Japan Film Institute, and it was one of the best in the series. A real eye opener--previous commenters nailed it. Definitely makes you want to explore the director's other work. Fits in that uniquely Japanese genre of the whodunnit where the process of detection requires travel throughout the country and specifics of local cultures and habits--so the travelogue is half the fascination. Getting a young Ken Takakura plus Rentaro Mikuni in the same picture is extra added bonus. If you like later films of this type such as *Castle of Sand* or *Vengeance Is Mine*, you'll like this one.

5 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
Blend of Kurosawa and Teshigahara, 17 September 2008

Author: jkierste-1 from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

"Kiga Kaikyo" is a perfect blend of Kurosawa's crime films ("The Bad Sleep Well" and "High and Low") with Teshigahara's hypnotism ("Pitfall," "Woman in the Dunes," and "The Face of Another"). Characteristic of the best films of 1960's Japanese cinema, Kudo blends a complex tale of deceit and moral dilemma with elegantly weaved chiaroscuro cinematography. The film unfolds over three acts with deliberate pacing; over these three acts the protagonist shifts into an antagonist and Kudo examines the primal nature of man. The film is not perfect -- it lacks the poignance of Kurosawa and the visual mastery of Teshigahara. Nevertheless, it blends both together seamlessly, tapping the best of both director's and delivery a tightly wound suspense curio that fails to disappoint.

3 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
Simpley Good, 9 February 2005

Author: shaid from Amsterdam, The Netherlands

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

*MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS* *MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS* *MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS* This film is not to be missed. It has all the ingredients of a great movie. A story based on characters. Characters we care about what happened to them. A development both in characters and story. And a social commentary on Japan after The Second World War. Supported by an excellent cast & story telling.

Filmed in black & white and at 182 minutes long, the film is never boring. One can only wish that such films will be made today. Unfortunately in the day of special effects such films have no place and that is a shame.

I can only recommend this film. It worth every money you pay for it and any time you will dedicate to see it.

0 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
Tedious, 19 July 2009

Author: timlin-4 from United States

This film is long, predictable, and boring. There is no suspense, the plot is stale, and the police procedure is completely uninteresting. The acting and cinematography are good, but there are some primitive effects whose strangeness is sort of unsettling as intended, but have mostly a comic effect for modern Western viewers (the sex scene with a fingernail is perhaps the highlight of the film). As in most Japanese movies, the characters are ridiculously awkward at times, but apparently this is how Japanese behave in reality.

While the depiction of post-war Japan was interesting, it wasn't enlightening, and as with German accounts of WWII you get the feeling that what little suffering is depicted is exaggerated.

Fans of Japanese cinema might like this film, but I recommend you watch Pitfall (again) if you are short on time, because Kiga kaikyo won't be adding much to your life.

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