AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

valis1949 Don't be misled. GRAVEYARD OF HONOR is not your typical Japanese Yakuza film. This genre most often depicts a battle between Good and Evil, or at the very least, the awareness of this struggle. Kinji Fukasaku, director of GRAVEYARD OF HONOR, has created a portrait of a character who is not cognizant of a single redeemable quality. Tetsuya Watari plays Rikio Ishikawa who was a real figure within the Japanese underworld in the years immediately following WWII. This man was clearly psychotic and was not to be restrained or regulated either by the police or leaders within his Yakuza brotherhood. Fresh out of jail, and then banished for attacking his own clan leader, he is sent to Osaka where he acquires a heroin habit. And, all along this downward slide, it is nearly impossible to generate any sympathy whatsoever for this reprehensible character. Fukasaku seems to suggest that US occupying forces were in some ways complicit in the corruption of post WWII Japan. As the US attempted to bolster Japanese self rule, it allowed the Yakuza's fortunes to prosper in phony democratic elections. However, in no way does this allow the viewer to empathize with the sadistically violent outbursts of Rikio Ishikawa. Kinji Fukasaku has crafted a film in which we watch as a malevolent anti-hero voraciously embraces the forces of darkness without a backwards glance.

MartinHafer This film is about a supposedly real-life yakuza maniac who made his mark in post-war Japan. In many ways, this nut was like Joe Pesci in GOODFELLAS except he had no friends at all (Pesci, a socipathic idiot at least had De Nero). Like Pesci, the anti-hero of this film had a hair-trigger temper and made a bad habit of screwing up his life. While the guy made it to the mid to upper levels in his organization, his insane actions (stabbing superiors, getting hooked on drugs and then stealing it from your superiors, etc.). If this guy WAS based on a real character, then the yakuza is actually a group of pussycats because no matter what he did, he seemed to get away with a lot of smacks on the hand. Imagine a mobster killing a godfather and just getting beaten up and banished as a result! Plus, shortly after his banishment, the idiot returns to town! This is all very interesting but the film, at times, just seems pointlessly violent. Sure, this guy's life WAS that way, but I just didn't want to sit and watch him rape, kill, stab, etc. for an entire movie. By the way, this is pretty much the entire plot. For gore and rape lovers, this film is for you--others think twice about watching.

JoeytheBrit Kinji Fukasaku's mid-70s faux-biopic of a sociopath Yakuza gangster in late-40s Japan is certainly an absorbing experience, even if it never quite manages to immerse the viewer entirely in the nihilism of the world in which Tetsuya Watari's Rikio Ishikawa exists. It's difficult really to determine whether Fukasaku is trying to attract or repulse us here and, for me, this is the film's main weakness. Ishikawa has no redeeming features: he's simply a crude, boorish rapist and murderer who invokes unexplainable loyalty in those around him. There is some amusement to be found in the bewilderment of Ishikawa's Yakuza superiors, who don't seem to know quite what to do with the loose cannon in their midst (presumably something in the Yakuza code prevents them from simply taking him into a back alley and shooting him like a dog) but, for all its kinetic energy and undeniable style Graveyard of Honour mostly fails to fascinate, and fascinate it must – the way a caterpillar squirming on the end of a pin fascinates – if it is to hold an audience who can feel little or no connection with its main character.Despite these criticisms, the film is never dull. Fukasaku is an unsurpassable director, completely confident of his skills, totally focused, and unafraid to adopt subjects and styles that must have seemed out of the ordinary at the time. It's to his credit that most of the techniques he uses in this film are still widely used today – especially by US gangster flicks. Fukasaku fills the screen with people in this one, countless people, hundreds of them, conveying the raucous and claustrophobic overcrowding of a country recovering from a bruising war. And while attention to period detail is perhaps not this film's strong point, this shortcoming is overcome by good use of sepia tones to reinforce the sense of history.

Scarecrow-88 This is a glorified, down-beat & grim "biopic" of a Yakuza madman named Ishikawa(Tetsuya Watari, who plays him as a quiet calm before the tornadic release)who has this mentally unstable nasty streak that comes out in a fiendish explosion when others stand in his way. He almost causes a clan war when he attacks a rival Yakuza lord from another city. This causes a downward spiral for him as his seemingly uncontrollable path of violence and death leads to a vicious attack on his own Kawada Yakuza Godfather and a banishment from all clans for ten years, which is part of the code. After a brief stint in prison he's ordered to stay in Osaka for the remaining ten and would be allowed back once he served his time. After only a year, Ishikawa returns to cause havoc once again. While in Osaka he developed a drug habit which would lead him down an even more violent path for he would find those in possession of what he needed and threaten their very lives if they wouldn't fork over product to stick in his arm. His only real ally is a tragic geisha, Chieko(Yumi Takigawa), who is slowly dying..but, even she suffered rape from Ishikawa showing that he has no real respect for anyone when it comes to getting his own degree of satisfaction by any means necessary. When he attacks the godfather of the Imai clan, no real avenue of escape will ever be available again. He often seems unkillable as attempts on his life are frequent, though he is often cunning through his hiding(..and also not so cunning when he appears in public at gambling houses). When he kills the Imai Godfather, his life expectancy shrinks considerably.The film is told in a documentary form with narration depicting a specific tumultuous time in the late forties when clans operated almost like little governments dictating business within the city of Shinjuku. Each has their turf and tries to remain loyal to each other hoping to escape any means of war. All Japanese loathe a specific group of foreigners nicknamed "the thirds" making up mostly Korean, Taiwanese, & Chinese who seem to try to live within the city but are treated as the plague of the country. We also see how the loss to America in the World War seems to have created a child without it's parents as this massive collective of people frequent the streets in droves. The Yakuza clans do seem to be the only means of parent-ship available to those without a home or identity. The film is ultimately a blitzkrieg of gang wars, prostituting whores, "black-market" elections, gambling, drugs, and Ishikawa is immersed within the frenzied structure..he's certainly a doomed creature because how can such a crazed heathen as he ever survive? The film has wildly imaginative camera-work which seems to show an unbalanced world through the gaze of Ishikawa. It has visual verve and is certainly loaded with bloody carnage.