Vengeance is Mine Review- By Michael Carlisle

Title: Vengeance is Mine
Year: 1979
Director: Shohei Imamura
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese

Curious about the film, I asked one of my friends about it. He said that Shohei Imamura's Vengeance is Mine was like a "Japanese version of American Psycho". This immediately sent me to the store, as I wanted to own a copy. Imamura was an innovative director, who spent much of the 60's and 70's making pictures regarding the displacement felt by Japanese Citizens following World War II. He transformed a stale film industry, pouring his heart and soul into his fiction and non-fiction works.

Basing his screenplay on a true crime novel by Ryuzo Saki. The story follows killer Iwao Enokizu (Ken Ogata, Mishima, a small-time con man who went on a five-person killing spree, eluding police for over two months. 

The plot is non-linear, it weaves out of present and past, and is all the better for it. There is no real reason for Enokizu's killings, although some suggest his run is a suicide-by-cop scheme while others contemplate if it's a rejection of the old ways of the samurai, which was death by honorable hara-kiri.  A modern psychologist would claim Enokizu is simply a sociopath. His victims are all powerless, he shows great weakness against any authority, including his own father, whom he has every notion to kill.

It is not clear where the vengeance is in the picture. Enokizu's murders seem random and their death proves no point. He doesn't even seem to have strong feelings for the people he kills. When the cops ask for a confession, he has no important statement to make. Although he seems to not care what happens to him or the people in his society, so why devulge important information at all? He only shows passion when he is having sex, which says a lot about the animalistic nature of man. He claims to be a catholic, yet is far from it in practice.

In conclusion, Vengeance is Mine is a great film that I hope to watch many more times so I can get a better idea of the symbolism in it and what it has to say. The performances are astounding and the cinematography is intelligent. Imamura never ceases to amaze me, his direction is simply perfection. Praise it! 5/5