"Film Comment Selects" Review: Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Retribution"

Kiyoshi Kurosawa has been one of the most consistently interesting stylists in Japanese cinema. His films can be superficially associated with the "J-Horror" genre, but anyone familiar with his work knows that much of it goes far beyond this catch-all label. His main strength is that he has not been bound to conventional narrative, and in using his adopted genre as a framework, he has been able to experiment greatly within this form to create a unique cinematic space of moody and intriguing images. In his finest work, including Cure, Pulse, Charisma, and Barren Illusion, Kurosawa offers haunting images that resonate well beyond initial viewings. These qualities extend to his ventures outside the genre, such as License to Live and Bright Future.

Unfortunately, Kurosawa seems to have hit something of a rut lately. His last film, Loft, was a disappointment, even though at first glance it contains many of the elements of his previous work: the somber, unsettling mood; the often baffling and near-incomprehensible occurrences, often concerning the fluidity between the worlds of the living and the dead. While diverting at first viewing, Loft left the impression of being a pale retread of much better earlier work.

However, it pains me to report that his latest film, Retribution, which had its New York premiere in Lincoln Center's "Film Comment Selects" series, is an even bigger and more serious misfire. Just like Loft, everything familiar to Kurosawa's films is present and accounted for, including his regular lead actor Koji Yakusho, as a detective investigating a serial killer case. And this is exactly the problem. Everything is far too familiar, both from Kurosawa's own films (much of it, including a crucial plot point revealed late in the film, feels like a remake of Cure), and other clichéd tropes of J-Horror, such as floating female ghosts (the one in this film often lets out an ear-splitting scream).