DVD: Retribution

DVD Reviewed by FOXY D

Editor's Rating:  

(6 /10)

Starring: Kôji Yakusho

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Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa has made a good handful of films and his reputation has been described as puzzling, mysterious and wilfully difficult to understand to the frustration of many.

In Retribution, a Tokyo detective Noboru Yoshioka is investigating the death of a lady dressed in red, and all the evidence is pointing to him. Throughout the movie several other murders occur in a similar way but at the hand of different killers. During this time we see the detective is being haunted by a ghost – the lady in red. This freaked me out in a way as she floated about howling eerily with her hands out sometimes as if she’s about to attack. To be honest I did laugh at one stage when she forgives him and leaves by jumping off a balcony with a gracious dip into the sky in the midst of a Superman like feel.

See the thing about movies is that once I start them, I have to finish them. Retribution did keep me interested as along the way so many questions came about, so I’m waiting for them to be answered. But that’s the disappointing part it just left me in suspense and really confused – none of my questions where answered! It was certainly frustrating, I get the part that the woman living with the detective was a ghost whom he was involved in with in the past, but he thought she was still real. Another thing I couldn’t understand was what did the detective do to the lady he was living with, for the lady in red to haunt him and act as truth? Why where the other murderers affected and did they see the lady in red too? Why was the lady left in the abandoned building, or why didn’t she just walk out before she died?

I liked the fact that there where so many questions, because that’s what kept me on the edge of my seat. I liked the concept that the ghost was a figure of truth from the past. Some like sense some don’t, but for the most I think this movie may leave you confused and frustrated.