Review of Vengeance Is Mine (1979) by Eric H — 09 Jun 2015

I can't honestly say that I 'got' the film 100%, but it sure kept me glued to the screen it's 2+ hour running time. Starts off as a docudrama look at a serial killer and his exploits, which is fine but you've been there before.

However, via fractured narrative and by focusing far more on the killer, his family, and the characters they interacts with, the film immediately breaks away from the tradition of giving equal (if not more) time to the investigation.

But even the in-depth look at the past and present of the antagonist doesn't quite explain his motivations. Expecting a 'pat' resolve, and not finding it herein, would be my only gripe with the film, which otherwise is a strange and hypnotic beast of rare quality, hard to pigeon-hole or categorize by the end, even if I thought I had it pegged at the beginning.

The director, Shohei Imamura, who had a pretty wild style in his feature films, had been doing documentaries for a decade before he returned to fiction with this film. Maybe the documentary set-up was a deliberate ploy to keep the audience off-balance as Imamura undermines and/or breaks away from the genre every so often.

At least 2 scenes will immediately pop out of the film as if they belong to another film altogether, and yet it all combines to great, surreal and creepy effect, when you consider the breadth of the themes and subplots and undercurrents introduced and explored.

Whew! I would highly recommend this movie to all but the squeamish.