Kaiji: Jinsei gyakuten gêmu (2009)

Kaiji, a young gambler who is constantly in debt, enters a deadly gambling competition in order to wipe away his loans.

Director:

Tôya Satô

Writers:

Nobuyuki Fukumoto (manga), Mika Ohmori (screenplay)

Stars:

Ken'ichi Matsuyama, Tatsuya Fujiwara, Takuma Anzai

Cast

Credited cast:
Ken'ichi Matsuyama	...	Makoto Sahara
Tatsuya Fujiwara	...	Kaiji Ito
Takuma Anzai
Teruyuki Kagawa	...	Yukio Tonegawa
Yûki Amami	...	Rinko Endo
Shogen	...	Majima
Tarô Yamamoto	...	Joji Funai
Yuriko Yoshitaka
Kei Satô	...	Kazutaka Okada
Shôhei Uno
Ken Mitsuishi	...	Koji Ishida
Nobuyuki Fukumoto	...	Black Suit A
Suzuki Matsuo	...	Taro Otsuki
Ryushin Tei
Bobby

Storyline

Kaiji Ito moves to Japan after graduating from high school. Unable to find a job and frustrated with society at large, Kaiji spends his days gambling, vandalizing cars, and drinking booze. Two years later and his life no better, a debt collector named Endo arrives to collect money. The debt collector then offers two choices to Kaiji: spend 10 year paying off your loan or board a gambling boat for one night to repay your debt and possibly make a whole lot more. Meanwhile, the unscrupulous Endo is actually conning Kaiji, believing he won't come back from voyage. Kaiji is then up for the night of his life.

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Plot Keywords:

live action remake of anime | sports | gambling | character name in title | 

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Taglines:

Life or death... on the turn of a card!

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Genres:

Drama

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Details

Official Sites:

Official site [Japan]

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Release Date:

10 October 2009 (Japan)

Also Known As:

Kaiji: The Ultimate Gambler

Filming Locations:

Kiryu, Gunma, Japan

Box Office

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$24,709,016

Company Credits

Production Co:

Nippon Television Network (NTV), Horipro, Toho Company

Technical Specs

Runtime:

130 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

This is the first work by Nobuyuki Fukumoto to be made into a live-action feature.

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Connections

Remade as Dong wu shi jie (2018)

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Soundtracks

It's All Too Much
Performed by Yui

User Reviews

Entertaining with plenty of twists.

It's easy to criticise this film for being very over the top and downright outlandish, and that's because it is. It definitely has some overacting and very silly moments or dialogue, does it really hurt this film? No. The entire premise is over the top right off the bat, the film is about a guy playing a casino game (on a boat for some reason, maybe to bypass illegal gambling laws... who knows?) which is basically rock paper scissors to wipe out his debt and if he loses is doomed to pay it off through slave labour. I can't turn around and say "Aw man, they've managed to make this silly!" on top of that it's an adaptation from a manga, a good adaptation as you would expect from a cast reunited from the live action Death Note (that's right they actually had a good one before Netflix).

This is a very entertaining film and with almost all films you know the hero is going to come out on top, this film is very good at baiting you into thinking he's found a way to basically cheat the system. I like the original idea that there is debt collectors who would victimize people to extort more from them including a sort of underground (ironically) mining operation that pays them a pittance then entices them to give it back in exchange for luxury items.