Jiro Segae (Akira Kobayashi) is released from prison after serving eight years for murder. His gang is disbanded and only the boss and one other member remains.
While Jiro was in prison, his boss became ill and was taken care of by a neighboring gang, the Hazama family. When he goes to pay his respects, Hazama offers Jiro a job running an up and coming city with the expectation that Jiro will help the family claim the land from other gangs who are fighting for it.
Jiro accepts the job and heads to the city with six other men to complete his task only to find that Hazama has no intention of keeping his word when it is all finished.
The city Jiro has been sent to take over is run by two completely different families: The Aoba family, who threatens people to get the land they want for the factories being built and the Tona family who uses the tactic of siding with the people who refuse to sell to Aoba, in hopes that gaining the favor of the people will help them get the land.
So, with two families so opposite, Jiro comes up with a plan to set their fighting in motion.
Jiro gains the trust of the farmers and convinces them to sell their land to him instead of the gangs. The farmers believe Jiro is in real restate and have no idea that he is backed by the Hazama family. However, Jiro came through on his promise to the farmers. He made sure their land was given to the men who are paying to build the factories and that they were all given stock in those companies. He even created a construction company to build those factories himself.
When it comes time for the Hazama family to congratulate him, they do not like how he intends to run the area that was promised to him, despite their agreement to allow him to rule how he sees fit. So, after all of the trouble of defeating two gangs, Jiro must now take down the gang who employed him in the first place.
Retaliation has all the makings of a fun revenge film. We have an honorable man betrayed, the death of a loved one and, most important of all, knife fights! Now, the knife fights are sparse and mostly short lived when they do happen, but they are knife fights. Who doesn’t love those? They are more personal than gun fights and, in my opinion, require a bit more skill than sword fighting due to the close proximity of the people involved.
The end fight is long, violent and full of blood, which more than makes up for the short fights leading up to it.
Originally released in 1968, Arrow has released a beautifully cleaned up version of the film on Blu-ray for the first time ever. Despite a few grainy moments that were no doubt tough to remaster, Arrow did an amazing job on this release and even included a couple of interviews on the special features including historian and critic Tony Rayns and actor Jo Shishido who played one of Jiro’s men.
If you’re a fan of bloody Yakuza films, Retaliation is worth every cent, but move quickly because it is a limited release to 3000 copies.
Retaliation is now available on Blu-ray from Arrow Films.
========================================================================================================= Ann Hale is the horror editor for Pop-Break.com and a senior contributing writer, reviewing horror movies and television shows. She is also the American Correspondent for Lovehorror.co.uk and writer for Geekandstuff.com. Ann attended East Carolina University, majoring in English Literature. She is a collector of Halloween (the film) memorabilia and is a self-admitted opinionated horror nerd. You can follow her, her collection and her cat, Edward Kittyhands on Twitter and Instagram @Scarletjupiter
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