REVIEW: HEBI NO MICHI
REVIEW: SERPENT'S PATH
REVIEW: DAIEI CO. LTD [ 1998 ] 85'
DIRECTOR: KIYOSHI KUROSAWA
WRITER: HIROSHI TAKAHASHI
CAST: SHO AIKAWA, TERUYUKI KAGAWA,
CAST: HUA RONG WENG, YUREI YANAGI
WTFFILM RATING:

"Do you get it?"

So says Nijima (Aikawa) when he first encounters Miyashita (Kagawa), who stumbles upon the former while he and a young prodigy are working through logic puzzles on the sidewalk. A year later, Nijima is helping Miyashita with his quest to find the yakuza responsible for the rape, torture, and murder of his 8 year old daughter Emi and using Miyashita's former connection to the group much to his advantage.

Their first prospect is underling Otsuki, whom they kidnap from his home and chain to a wall in sound proof warehouse prepared by Nijima. Miyashita proves to be a bit hot-headed, nearly shooting Otsuki out of rage just after he is captured, and the cool, quiet Nijima is left in charge of the operation. After several days of existing in the slovenly conditions, Otsuki identifies small-time yakuza boss Hiyama as the one responsible for Emi's death. Following the directions of Otsuki, the pair hunt down and capture Hiyama as he's playing golf one afternoon, earning the guile of his devoted and crippled female bodyguard along the way, and chain him up next to their other prisoner.

Now face to face with his boss, Otsuki begins to backtrack - claiming that he never said Hiyama was the murderer. Miyashita becomes increasingly neurotic, caught up in the chaos he and Nijima are creating in the name of justice. Soon the two yakuza have identified yet another suspect - the monstrous Ariga - as the one who killed Emi. All the while, Hiyama's bodyguard is hunting for her master with a small army of loyal henchmen in tow . . .

Soon, a final battle with the yakuza becomes imminent - Nijima captures Ariga and uses him to bait the others into meeting up with him at the "factory" (the decrepit location where the gang produces a variety of snuff films, including the one in which Miyashita's daughter is killed). Nijima reveals to Miyashita that his daughter, too, was killed by Hiyama's operation - uncovering at least part of the reason for why he was willing to help. But as the showdown draws to a close and, one by one, the yakuza fall, Miyashita realizes that Nijima has one last bit of unfinished business to attend to . . .

SERPENT'S PATH is part one of a duo of films made by Kiyoshi Kurosawa (just after the production of CURE and just before that same film became such an international success) based upon the same story - it would be followed just two months later by the darker EYES OF THE SPIDER [KUMO NO HITMOI]. Made in the same vein as Kurosawa's earlier V-cinema yakuza pictures, both films are relatively straight forward tales of revenge but, as with all of his genre offerings, there is considerably more percolating just beneath the surface.

Much like in CURE the year before, the focus in SERPENT'S PATH is clearly on human beings and the nature of identity. As in the earlier film, characters possess multi-layered personalities, making it difficult to identify just what their true nature is. Miyashita, for instance, is a devoted family man deeply troubled by the murder of his daughter (it drives him to the point of insanity by the conclusion of the film). On the flip-side, he willingly involves himself in Hiyama's snuff distribution ring and, as the film indicates throughout, may be a pedophile as well. Nijima is also a hard-to-define character - a personable school teacher who heads a night class devoted to understanding logic puzzles (what's shown in the film seems to resemble the work of German mathematician Gottlob Frege), he spends his off time assisting Miyashita in capturing, tormenting, and ultimately killing the yakuza responsible for the abduction and murder of his daughter.

Nijima carries on both of his duties with the same attitude - going so far as riding his bike back and forth between locations and treating his Yakuza captives in much the same way as a teacher might treat unruly students (though to considerably more severe extremes). His vengeful focus seems to be of a much broader nature than that of Miyashita, with the latter caring only about doing away with the individual who killed his daughter - Nijima, on the other hand, intends to get rid of the operation in its entirety, using his logician background as a basis for creating complex plans for dealing with the problem. He recognizes the obsessive narrow-mindedness of Miyashita and uses it very much to his advantage throughout the film.

SERPENT'S PATH also seems to be very much about human adaptability. Otsuki is the clearest example of this put forth by the film - at first resistant of the harsh treatment of his captors (Nijima washes him with a garden hose and drops his meals face-down on the floor while Miyashita recites his daughter's autopsy results to him on a more or less regular schedule), Otsuki eventually resigns himself to his new reality and, in spite of the vast difference in conditions, his original personality begins to show again. In a similar fashion, Nijima simply redirects his life towards the purpose of revenge after his daughter is killed, leaving much of his original personality and mannerisms intact.

An example of the opposite is Miyashita himself - nervous from the outset, he becomes consistently more neurotic as the film progresses and becomes increasingly obsessed with viewing an old camcorder tape of his child playing. By the latter third of the film, Miyashita has begun to lose his grasp on reality - hearing noises coming from the trunk of a car when there's nothing but the lifeless body of Hiyama within.

That distinct Kurosawa style that marks CURE, KAIRO, and CHARISMA is well in place in SERPENT'S PATH. From his long takes to his complex compositions to his uncanny utilization of space, Kurosawa is at the height of his visual game with this effort. Makio Ika's sound work is also key to the film's success - music is used sparingly with much of the score being dominated by a sort of low industrial heartbeat. Thanks to Ika, who has worked with Kurosawa on seven other films thus far, SERPENT'S PATH possesses an appropriately unsettling edge throughout.

Even with its dark tone and disquieting subject matter, Kurosawa still found time to include flashes of the absurdist humor that has become one of his trademarks. It's hard not to laugh when you witness a pair of men dragging a yakuza boss across a golf course in a body bag with his henchmen in hot pursuit and the captured yakuza being broken by the lack of a toilet, of all things, is portrayed in a darkly funny light. Then there's Ariga who, in response to Miyashita's asking who he is (after being told by Nijima to deny being Ariga), says, simply, "I wonder?"

SERPENT'S PATH, along with EYES OF THE SPIDER, was a straight to video production produced on 16mm film. Luckily, the keen narrative and aesthetic sensibilities behind the film ensure that it transcends the stigma associated with such cinema in the US (ANACONDA 3 this definitely isn't). Whether taken at face value as a quality yakuza thriller or viewed with all of its subtext in mind, SERPENT'S PATH is still another stellar offering from Kurosawa that's simply not to be missed.

Highly recommended.