Immamura Shohei, one of Japan's best directors, does not put a foot wrong in VENGEANCE IS MINE, one of the best films ever made.
This is a searing, raw, uncompromising study of a disturbed, callous, opportunistic killer, husband and son.
The film, running just over two hours, takes an almost doco-style approach to the crimes of its protagonist (played with chilling conviction by Ken Ogata) and takes great pains to examine the impact his behavior had on his mother, father and wife.
A flashback, which goes some way towards explaining how Ogata developed such a disdain for authority, is a masterstroke of cinematic brevity.
Although Immamura is known mostly for such brilliant work as THE PORNOGRAPHERS, BLACK RAIN and the excellent THE EEL, this is surely his crowning achievement, a film so rich and involving that it personifies everything that is so amazing about Japanese cinema, truly a cinema of the soul.
