ShangLuda Admirable film.

Connianatu How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Alistair Olson After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Argemaluco I like a lot some Japanese horror movies but,on last years,that kind of cinema made a new cliché:the ghost looking for revenge.And that formula tired me.So,I did not expect too much from Retribution.But,I have to say the film was a nice surprise.It's not great but it's fun and tense.First of all,Retribution is more focused on the suspense than other Japanese horror movies.And the film kept me very tense and I wanted to know what could happen.The film has a very good story that,since the beginning caught my attention.The fail I found on this movie is that there are some redundant and a little bit boring scenes which could have been edited out.Retribution is a very decent film which kept me interested and,except some moments,it kept me very entertained.

moimoichan6 Kyoshi Kurosawa is a talented but maybe too prolific director. Since the early 90's, he had almost directed 30 movies. No wonder that, when Takashige Ichise, the master producer of J-Horror ("Ring", "The Grudge") asks him to direct one of the Jap-Horror trilogy movie along with Hideo Nakata and Shimizu, you get a little feeling of "Déjà-vu" in front of his new movie : "Sakebi" (Retribution). Of course, there's still lots of excellent ideas in the movie, and some parts are majestically directed : all the ghosts apparitions are really beautiful, and the movie take there and then an experimental approach in their representation. It almost looks like a modern art installation. Some shots are also really well thought, as the one of the interrogation of a suspect, filmed in continuation, with the help of a mirror in the back in order to create a double space. But the most original aspect of the movie is the depiction of the modern Tokyo, witch doesn't look modern at all. In the movie, the city looks like a post-war town, everything is rotten and lugubre, there's nobody in the dark streets. You don't often see such a representation of Japan, far from the clichés of the ultra-modern society it's supposed to be.But the problem is that all this was ultimately in others Kurosawa's movies, as if he wanted to offer a sort of best-of his previous works here. His style haven't change, and the story isn't really surprising for any "Kaïro"'s spectator. This lack of surprise leads to a feeling of boringness, and I couldn't get out of my mind, after the movie, the idea that it was clearly unoriginal (for a Kurosawa's movie, of course) and a little bit too long (maybe cutting 20 minutes of the movie would have been a good thing).But all in all, this movie is a good introduction to his tormented universe, and for those who already know it, well, a new Kyoshi Kurosawa's movie certainly comes out in 3 months.

DICK STEEL Retribution, punishment that is considered to be morally right and fully deserved. And for those who, like myself, have not gotten warned enough from writer-director Kyoshi Kurosawa's earlier duds like Loft, watching Retribution is retribution enough for not heeding that warning with its red light flashing from a distance. I enjoyed Kairo, but somehow the subsequent works of his which I've watched, failed to captivate just as much.Simply put, Retribution contains all the classical elements of things that go bump in the night, the Kurosawa way. Don't expect sudden boos - you'll get long takes, the quiet, and something I've always admired, how spirits appear in the background so gradually, it's actually frightening. But too much of a good thing becomes cliché, and spicing it up by making them fly like Keanu Reeves in the Matrix sequels, just reeks. This movie too suffered from too many of the same type ghouls, and having one of them, the sticky Woman in Red (Riona Hazuki, whom I swear looks very much like local TV actress Jacelyn Tay) letting out cries that can challenge any siren, inevitably makes you want to cover your eyes each time she appears.As the story goes, Koji Yakusho, a Kurosawa movie regular, plays a veteran detective Yoshioka assigned to investigate the homicide of the woman in a scarlet red dress, who was drowned in salty water accumulated in a puddle at a construction site. Curiously enough, the evidence all point to him - his whereabouts unknown, and a button at the scene which could have come from his own jacket. The problem is, he has no recollection what the heck had happened, and neither does he know the girl. Along the way, he seemed to be guided by this invisible force which he calls his hunch, to nab other suspects in other cases of similar modus operandi - that of drowning in shallow salt waters.It's pretty much a character study piece of Yoshioka, with many flashbacks and numerous attempts tying up its convoluted loose ends. His nasty demeanour of unorthodox tactics (I just love that chase up the rooftop and its resolution of that scene) make him unpopular, and when alone, his relationship with his beautiful girlfriend Harue (Manami Konishi) makes you wonder why the bad boys get all the nice girls. Anyway that aside, it's precisely these relationship issues that put the entire story on a spin, and which I thought for a man like him, saving his whisky bottle during an earthquake speaks loads.As mentioned earlier, the production is almost minimal, especially with Yoshioka alone in his apartment. The movie's not for everyone, and restless teenagers are better off leaving the theatre rather than to vent their displeasure at the other folks who want to endure this. There are a few surprises in store for those patient enough to wait till they emerge, but therein arose more questions to be answered. You wont get satisfaction watching this movie, all you get is retribution for wasting time watching something quite hokey and clunky.If there's only one thing I like about the movie, it's that one special effects shot involving a water pan towards the end. Blink and you'll miss it.

Coventry Having seen "Cure" and "Kairo", I was prepared for another mildly confusing and oddly structured film from Kiyoshi Kurasawa, but the man really surpassed himself here! "Retribution" is downright freaking weird!! Not just the 'I don't get it' kind of weird, but inexplicably uncanny, haunting and perplexing. Kurasawa's style and stories already were a class above the rest of the Asian supernatural horror-industry, but "Retribution" might even be his absolute best effort to date. It's an engaging thriller with an extremely charismatic protagonist (director's favorite Kôji Yakusho), a continuously tense atmosphere and a handful of genuinely creepy moments that are guaranteed to send cold shivers down your spine. Summarizing the plot accurately is a nearly impossible task to accomplish, but I'll try anyway. In a relatively short span of time, inspector Yoshioka and his colleagues of the Tokyo police have to investigate three macabre murders where the victims were drowned in saltwater. The modus operandi is identical in all three cases, but there's no connection to be found between the victims and – moreover – the culprits aren't difficult to track down. Yoshioka arrests three different killers that immediately confess their crimes, but can't give a proper explanation for what it was that drove them to kill or why they specifically drowned their victims in saltwater. The more Yoshioka investigates the three murders, the more the evidence points out that he himself might be an important suspect. He's definitely guilty of something, as he's soon stalked by the creepy appearance of the first murder victim. The girl is dressed in a bright red dress and produces chilly screams that pierce you to the very marrow. "Retribution" is slow-paced and soberly filmed, but somehow Kurasawa manages to hold your attention simply with great dialogs and intriguing character drawings. There's no gore and not even that much action, but the tone of the film is constantly ominous and the Lady in Red is at least 10 times scarier than all the eerie kids of "Ringu", "Phone", "The Grudge" and all the other phony ghost-appearances in Asian thrillers combined! "Retribution" is an impeccably stylish and well-made film, containing enchanting photography and flawless editing as well as atmospheric music and great acting. The script is stuffed with ingenious little plot-details (like the constant wave of earthquakes and the significance of the saltwater) and the talented Yakusho is always a joy to behold. However, exactly like in "Cure", the exaggeratedly complexity towards the end of the film nearly ruins the whole viewing experience. I said it before and I'll say it again: just ONCE I'd like to see a Japanese occult-thriller that doesn't leave me scratching my head after the final denouement. The events in "Retribution" were fairly comprehensible for about three quarters of the movie, but then suddenly it seemed like everyone involved in the production lost interest and just came up with the most confusing finale imaginable.