Overview: Considered the magnum opus of the five decades-long career of Tomu Uchida (Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji, The Mad Fox), the epic crime drama A Fugitive from the Past was voted third in the prestigious Kinema Junpo magazine’s 1999 poll of the Top Japanese Films of the 20th Century.

In 1947, a freak typhoon sends a passenger ferry running between Hokkaido and mainland Japan plunging to the ocean depths, with hundreds of lives lost. During the chaos, three men are witnessed fleeing a burning pawnshop in the Hokkaido port town of Iwanai.

The police suspect theft and arson, and when Detective Yumisaka (Junzaburo Ban) discovers the burned remains of a boat and the corpses of two men, he sets about tracking the shadowy third figure.

Meanwhile, the mysterious Takichi Inukai (Rentaro Mikuni) takes shelter with a prostitute, Yae (Sachiko Hidari), a brief encounter that will come to define both of their lives. A decade later, long after the trail has gone cold, Yumisaka is called back by his successor Detective Ajimura (Ken Takakura) as two new dead bodies are found.

Blu-ray Verdict: Making its home video debut outside of Japan, this adaptation of Tsutomu Minakami’s 1700-page novel is a landmark in master director Uchida’s oeuvre. Its gritty monochrome photography has the immediacy of newsreel as Uchida uses the landscapes of postwar Japan to explore the massive social upheaval and unspoken legacies of the war, and create an unsettling karmic allegory of a man’s struggle to escape his past sins.

OK, telling it like it is, from the start, and covering all the bases so that we’re all on the same page, A Fugitive from the Past (alt. Hunger Straits or Straits of Hunger) is a 1965 allegorical police procedural mystery drama based on Tsutomu Minakami’s novel, directed by Tomu Uchida, who’s sometimes seen as a Japanese New Wave figure but that’s really impossible to determine because the movement never officially existed. This movie is usually hailed as his magnum opus.

AFftP begins with a recap of a 1940s maritime disaster and proceeds to follow three robbers for a bit. After the opening, the date and location constantly shift forward as the film starts to focus on a wide array of characters, one by one. It’s unofficially divided into three acts, the first of which is a mystery tale ft. the robber, the prostitute and the detective, the second act, which follows the prostitute’s life story from there on, and the third, where the cops slowly start to break the robber’s mask down.

The movie is not only a subtly satirical overview on the Japanese post- war society, but is also laced with Buddhist messages. It’s very hard to understand the intent of the makers without some context, but the story apparently follows the protagonist’s karma, which certainly makes for an unique character study. Some scenes are seen through negative film - I suppose that those are intended to be particularly important but I don’t know why. The other two interesting visual approaches are the usage of a grey filter during the detective’s crime reconstruction scenes that take place in his head, and the overwhelming usage of blowing fans which are somehow positioned in almost every frame from the third act.

AFftP is sometimes compared to Kurosawa’s High and Low, both being crime procedural films. One thing Uchida does better is providing interesting characters; the cast in his film is MUCH more interesting than in Kurosawa’s film. Rentaro Mikuni, the most underrated Japanese actor ever, gives a fascinating lead performance; his character is unpredictable and mysterious as he should be.

Sachiko Hidari (wife of New Wave director Susumu Hani) is very lovely as the somewhat childish prostitute and the second act, which centers around her, is definitely the best. Special mention to Jonzaburo Ban and Ken Takakura as the two cops which shine in the third act.

One thing that Kurosawa does better is presenting the actual investigation aspect. In HaL, the audience is just as clueless as the characters and therefore the investigation is more interesting to follow. In AFftP, Uchida shows us many scenes revolving around the robber before the cops start investigating. The third act sometimes gets really tedious because the cops take forever to realize that which the audience knows and some of their remarks are really stupid.

Like in the scene where two corpses with strangle marks are found in the water, with a rock tied to them, and some jackass suggests that maybe it was a double suicide. All that, combined with the unnecessary long runtime (3 hours, without an intermission), make the movie weaker than it should’ve been. Uchida takes his time telling the plot and the pace is constantly slow, but I’m not sure whether or not this tactic really works because it renders most of the film forgettable, even though it keeps the viewer interested while it’s going on.

In closing, A Fugitive from the Past is definitely worth a watch for anyone interested in the Japanese New Wave, but don’t expect to get much out of it unless you are an expert on Buddhism. The point of the movie seems out of the reach, but it’s a satisfying mystery film overall. This is a Widescreen Presentation (1.85:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs and comes with the Special Features of:

High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation of the restored 183 minute-long cut of the film
Original uncompressed mono audio
Optional English subtitles
Introduction by writer and curator Jasper Sharp
Scene-specific commentaries from leading Japanese film scholars Aaron Gerow, Irene González-López, Erik Homenick, Earl Jackson, Daisuke Miyao and Alexander Zahlten
Original theatrical trailer
Image gallery
Tomu Uchida filmography
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella