Retribution (film)

Infobox Film
name = Retribution


director = Kiyoshi Kurosawa
producer =
writer = Kiyoshi Kurosawa
starring = Koji Yakusho Manami Konishi Tsuyoshi Ihara Hiroyuki Hirayama Joe Odagiri
cinematography = Akiko Ashizawa
editing = Nobuyuki Takahashi
distributor = Avex Entertainment Xanadeux Company
released = flagicon|Japan February 24, 2007
runtime = 102 min.
country = Japan
language = Japanese
website = http://sakebi.jp/index.html
amg_id = 1:357717
imdb_id = 0843302nihongo|"Retribution"|叫|sakebi is a 2006 J-Horror film directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa.

Plot summary

Yoshioka, an experienced police detective, investigates the murder of an unknown woman in a red dress. She was drowned on the Tokyo waterfront, in a pool of muddy water, but an autopsy reveals that her belly is full of seawater. Moreover, all the clues he finds relate to Yoshioka: A button found at the murder scene matches one that is missing from one his coat, and fingerprints that cover the body match his own. Yoshioka realizes that the only viable suspect is himself; the problem is that he doesn’t remember a thing.

A ghost in a red dress soon starts appearing to him. As these apparitions become more intense and bizarre, more murders appear with the same drowning by salt water. As the later perpetrators are all found easily, a serial killer is ruled out and Yoshioka is stuck with one unsolvable crime that points to him.

Cast

* Koji Yakusho - Yoshioka
* Manami Konishi - Harue
* Riona Hazuki - F18
* Tsuyoshi Ihara - Detective Miyaji
* Hiroyuki Hirayama - Young detective Sakurai
* Joe Odagiri - Dr. Takagi

Interpretation

As F18, the ghost of the movie, is seeking revenge from past events of which every protagonist is apparently responsible, the horror in Retribution has been seen by some as expressing some kind of social illness and collective guilt in our contemporary world.cite web
url=http://cinepinion.blogspot.com/2007/07/retribution.html
title=Retribution
quote="She may be a revenge-seeking ghost and proof-positive of an afterlife or she may simply be a psychological symbol of collective guilt that drives the characters to behave madly. "I died," she plaintively insists, "so everyone else should die, too."
publisher= [http://cinepinion.blogspot.com/ Cinepinion]
date=2007-07-06
accessdate=2008-04-20] [cite web
url=http://www.d-kaz.com/reviews/review.php?id=370
title=Retribution
quote="This is Kurosawa at his most apocalyptic, portraying a contemporary world that seems decaying in its last days as it etches out an existence amidst the industrial detritus of the previous world...The horror film semantics no longer appear scary because they are being mobilized to express forlorn symptoms of a morose social illness."
publisher=d-kaz.com
date=2007-02-21
accessdate=2008-04-20]

References

External links

* [http://sakebi.jp/index.html Official site] (in Japanese)
* [http://www.sarudama.com/japanese_movies/sakebi.shtml "Retribution" review] at SaruDama.com
* [http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=357717 plot summary on New York-Times]
* [http://www.d-kaz.com/reviews/review.php?id=370 review on d-kaz]
* [http://imdb.com/title/tt0843302/ imdb.com entry for Sakebi]