Abashiri Prison: Teruo Ishii

The yakuza film may be a common fixture of modern Japanese cinema, but before 1965 they were almost unheard of. Then Toei released Abashiri Prison, a stark prison drama directed by Teruo Ishii of tokusatsu and ero guro fame. It starred relative unknown Ken Takakura as Shinichi Tachibana, a criminal sent to Abashiri Prison located in the remote, snowy wasteland of Hokkaido. When Tachibana only has about six months left to serve, he is coerced into taking part in a massive escape attempt while handcuffed to an amoral, maniacal cell-mate. The central idea of the movie was that Tachibana was an honorable man who was forced into crime to take care of his mother and sister who were living with an abusive father-in-law. Throughout the film Tachibana demonstrates himself to be a man of integrity: he sticks up for newcomers, he alerts an older prisoner who will be killed the night of the escape so that he doesn't slow the rest of the escapees down, and he agonizes over being forced to betray the trust of the friendly prison warden who went the extra mile in trying to get him paroled. Perhaps impressed by Tachibana's unflinching sense of morality, duty, and honor, the Japanese public fell in love with Abashiri Prison. As a result, Takakura was rocketed to stardom, the Abashiri franchise would go on to encompass another eighteen films, and the yakuza genre was guaranteed a place in Japanese pop culture. But the film itself is also an expertly crafted piece of entertainment. Yoshikazu Yamasawa's cinematography expertly captures the crowded, claustrophobic environment of the prison and and barren expanses of Hokkaido. The script is razor-sharp, alternating between Tachibana's life in prison and flashbacks to his terrible childhood (watch how cleverly Ishii transitions between present-day and the past via sound cues or visual memes). At only about 90 minutes, the film's plot is tightly compact: the first third sets up the prison culture and its hierarchy, the second third dives into Tachibana's backstory, and the last third follows Tachibana's doomed escape. One of the best sequences is a chase scene on railroad carts that gives the mine cart scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) a run for its money.

8/10