When Retribution (2006) finished, a mood came over me and lingered. Not quite despair, a sweet sense of sadness maybe. A tinge of desolation? During the movie, there were several scenes that were eerie and unnerving yet elegantly designed and delivered. I wanted to applaud: Kiyoshi Kurosawa, you are the King! The man knows how to tell a ghost story.
Once again, Kurosawa works with leading man Kōji Yakusho (of Cure, Charisma), who is playing a detective who wears a trench-coat (naturally). Unlike in Cure, right from the start there is something off about Yakusho’s detective, waking up unkempt after a night of drinking. A woman has been discovered murdered, drowned in a puddle of seawater by the industrialised bay. It’s inferred that Yakusho’s character is connected, even as he is investigating the killing. How is he connected? He can’t figure it out.
As the movie continues with neo-noir allusions within its procedural narrative, Kiyoshi as writer-director complicates the matter. Earthquakes occur, occasionally. Another victim is discovered drowned in seawater. Dialogue referencing buildings continually being torn down, and areas turned into landfill and empty lots, deepens in thematic weight. As a ghost figure emerges, Retribution digs into how urban development is an act of violent forgetting and negation.
Riona Hazuki is the red-dress-wearing presence that becomes such a memorable factor of the film’s eerieness. And it was great to see Tsuyoshi Ihara as Yakusho’s subordinate officer (as they would later star together in Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins). The locations selected for the film majorly add to the vibes, particularly the emptiness of the bay and the barge glimpsed going up and down the water.
There’s a copy on YouTube you can watch. Recommended.
VHS Tracking 