Vengeance Is Mine

Vengeance Is Mine (復讐するは我にあり, 1979) is Shohei Imamura's Japanese crime drama, available to watch online on iFILM. It follows Iwao Enokizu, a charming killer crisscrossing the country with the police always one step behind.

For seventy-eight days he drifts across Japan, leaving bodies, forged papers and deceived women in his wake. Imamura refuses to turn him into a monster or to explain him away. The camera simply trails Enokizu — con man, liar, lady-killer — and notes how easily he crosses each line and how little it costs him. Running underneath is the suffocating story of his family: a devout father, a wife he is drawn to against all reason.

The film grew out of a real criminal case and Ryūzō Saki's novel. Ken Ogata plays the cold emptiness behind the smile so precisely that you can't look away. This isn't the usual catch-the-villain procedural but a calm, merciless study of evil, and one of the high points of 1970s Japanese cinema. Stream Vengeance Is Mine (1979) online on iFILM.