Review of Vengeance Is Mine (1979) by Jonathan R — 02 Oct 2008

An immensely powerful and relentlessly depressing Japanese study of a serial killer. What makes the film so distinctive - and so disturbing - is Imamura's unusual approach to the material. He deliberately avoids making easy excuses for Iwao Enokizu's sociopathic behaviour, and (in contrast to those Hollywood serial killer flicks, whose bad guys - however deranged - always work to some plan or design) his killer is, for once, disconcertingly unpredictable. Quite literally, we don't know what he's going to do next! A serial fraudster as well as a killer, certainly there's a monetary sub-motive for the murders, though Enokizu does not seem to be driven solely by greed and is also capable of generosity. If anything, those characters who court Enokizu's wrath and live to tell the tale outnumber his actual victims, but as his father explains: "You [Enokizu] can only kill people you don't hate"; as a rule of thumb, the innocent die first!

Narrowly avoiding becoming confusing by way of careful signposting, the choppy narrative constantly flits back and forth in time, intercutting details of, for instance, Enokizu's crimes, the police manhunt, his interrogation, etc, with two core phases of character development. The first of these focuses on the potentially taboo relationship between Enokizu's devoutly Catholic father and his daughter-in-law, Enokizu's estranged wife, while the ne'er-do-well serves a jail term for fraud. His killing spree underway, the second phase follows the doomed friendship Enokizu forms with an innkeeper and her mother, the latter a convicted murderess, following his release from prison. There are a couple of notably surreal touches - not least the ending - which are completely at odds with the pseudo-documentary feel of most of the film. This could be the only movie in which you'll see a killer wash some blood off his hands with his own urine!