Vengeance Is Mine - The Criterion Collection (Blu-ray)

Theatrical Release Date: Japan, 1979
Director: Shōhei Imamura
Writers: Masaru Baba, Shunsaku Ikehata
Cast: Ken Ogata, Mayumi Ogawa, Rentarō Mikuni, Mitsuko Baisho

Release Date: August 26th, 2014|
Approximate Running Time: 140 Minutes 45 seconds
Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1 Widescreen / 1080 Progressive / MPEG-4 AVC
Rating: NR
Sound: LPCM Mono Japanese
Subtitles: English
Region Coding: Region A
Retail Price: $39.95

"A thief, a murderer, and a charming lady-killer, Iwao Enokizu (Ken Ogata) is on the run from the police. Director Shohei Imamura turns this fact-based story—about the seventy-eight-day killing spree of a remorseless man from a devoutly Catholic family—into a cold, perverse, and at times diabolically funny examination of the primitive coexisting with the modern." - synopsis provided by the distributor

Video: 4.5/5

Here’s the information provided about this release's transfer, "This high-definition digital transfer was created on a Spirit 2K Datacine from a new 35mm low-contrast print made from the original camera negative. Thousands of instances of dirt, debris, scratches, splices, warps, jitter, and flicker were manually removed using MTI's DRS and Pixel Farm's PFClean."

Vengeance Is Mine comes on a 50 GB dual layer Blu-ray.

Disc Size: 43.4 GB

Feature: 38.6 GB

For a release that is 12 years old, this transfer holds up really well. Flesh tones and colors look correct; contrast, black levels, and image clarity are solid, and there are no issues with compression or digital noise reduction.

Audio: 5/5

This release comes with one audio option, a LPCM mono mix in Japanese with removable English subtitles. The track sounds excellent, the dialogue is always clear, everything sounds balanced, and ambient sounds are well-represented.

Extras:

Extras for this release include a theatrical teaser (3 minutes 2 seconds, Dolby Digital mono Japanese with removable English subtitles), a theatrical trailer (3 minutes 1 second, Dolby Digital mono Japanese with removable English subtitles), excerpts from a 1999 interview with director Shohei Imamura, produced by the Directors Guild of Japan (10 minutes 17 seconds, Dolby Digital mono Japanese with removable English subtitles), an archival audio commentary with film critic Tony Rayns, and a 34-page booklet with cast & crew information, a writing by Shōhei Imamura titled On Vengeance Is Mine, an essay titled Civilization and Its Discontents written by Michael Atkinson, an archival interview with Shōhei Imamura titled To and From Fiction conducted by Toichi Nakata, a writing by Shōhei Imamura titled My Approach to Filmmaking, and information about the transfer.

Summary:

Shôhei Imamura directed Vengeance Is Mine. He’s known for Pigs and Battleships, The Insect Woman, Intentions of Murder, The Pornographers, The Ballad of Narayama, Zegen, Black Rain, The Eel, and Warm Water Under a Red Bridge.

A con man and murderer named Iwao Enokizu evades capture by outsmarting the police for 78 days.

By the mid-1960s Shôhei Imamura would form his own production company after working for Nikkatsu Corporation for a decade. While Shôhei Imamura made a trio of films in the later half of the 1960s, he would only make documentaries in the decade following Profound Desires of the Gods. This brings us to Vengeance Is Mine, a film that fuses Shôhei Imamura's earlier cinema with his documentaries.

Vengeance Is Mine is based on the actual events of the 78-day manhunt to catch Iwo Enixum. Shōhei Imamura for Vengeance Is Mine employs a documentary style that enhances the realism of the event being depicted. Throughout Vengeance Is Mine, there is text that appears onscreen laying out dates and information about the victims. While the narrative begins with the killer's capture, from there it shifts to a non-linear structure that mostly takes place in the past. That said, once the story settles in and all of the main characters have been introduced, the non-linear structure becomes a nonfactor since the story is so overpowering.

Ken Ogata (The Demon) gives the performance of his career as Iwao Enokizu. Throughout, Iwao Enokizu takes on various personalities, many fashioned from his victims, and Ken Ogata’s ability to shift between these personas is extraordinary. Another area where his performance excels is how he often restrains any emotion and comes off as a blank slate. Another performance of note is Mitsuko Baisho’s (Hitokiri) portrayal of Iwao Enokizu’s wife, who becomes entangled in an affair with Iwao’s father.

Vengeance Is Mine is much more than a story about a killer; it's a film that explores themes of nihilism, voyeurism, jealousy, and religion. Vengeance Is Mine, like all of the cinema of Shōhei Imamura, requires one to dig deeper and look beyond the surface. While there are many moments of violence that occur onscreen, the most jarring of these moments is a scene where the killer's wife and father boil a dog to death; fortunately, the dog is only heard and never seen. That said, there is a rawness to the killings that enhance their authenticity. Ultimately, Vengeance Is Mine is an exemplary crime drama where the darkest sides of the human condition are on full display.

Vengeance Is Mine gets an excellent release from The Criterion Collection that comes with a solid audio/video presentation and insightful extras. Highly recommended.

 

Written by Michael Den Boer