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Released by: Eureka Video
Released on: February 24, 2003.
Director: Kinji Fukasaku
Cast: Tatsuo Umemiya, Tetsuya Watari, Yumi Takigawa, Noburo Ando, Hajime Hana
Year: 1975
The Movie:
In Kinji Fukasaku's Graveyard of Honor, Tetsuya Watari (of Seijun Suzuki's Tokyo Drifter) plays Rikio Ishikawa, an up and coming street thug of sorts who inadvertently ends up joining the Kawada Yakuza gang who operate out of Tokyo in the 1940s.
He's too rebellious for his own good though, and after angering the established Yakuza a few too many times, he leaves so that he can start his own gang. In order to shoot straight to the top of the underworld food chain, what he does is go straight for the boss of the Kawadas. He stages a brutal assault on the boss, which brings a huge amount of disrespect to him, ultimately not only disgracing himself, but his entire Yakuza family as well.
With his old family after him for revenge, Ishikawa allows himself to be arrested and he's sent off to prison for a year or so, but he'll soon find that he's not even safe behind bars and in police custody, as his actions have brought down the wrath of the entire Kawada family and all of the resources that they have available to them. Add to that the fact that even the lowliest of thugs would gain instant acceptance by putting a bullet in Ishikawa's head and you can see how things might get a little bit complicated for our (anti) hero.
In order to save his life, he flees Tokyo and hides out in Osaka for another year, where the Kawada group has little to no presence. But once his self-imposed exile is up, he plans his return to Tokyo so that he can finish what he started.
Graveyard Of Honor is Fukasaku at the height of his cinematic prowess. He deftly blends many of the themes he touched on in his other Yakuza films and injects them with hyper-kinetic doses of stark violence and brutal realism. His common theme of one man fighting against the system has never been so well explored as it is in this film and his experimental camera work brings it all to the forefront and leaves nothing to your imagination.
We're pulled into Ishikawa's sick world and we find ourselves cheering for him. Despite the fact that he is nothing but a criminal and a murderer we want him to succeed because the characters are realistic enough that we can relate to them even if we can't always relate to their actions.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Eureka presents the film in a decent 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. This appears to be the correct aspect ratio for the film, and it fares much better than some of the other Eureka releases that just looked terrible. Colors are pretty solid though there is some grain and print damage throughout the film that you can't help but notice. In some of the darker scenes some compression artifacts do creep up, as does some slight edge enhancement, but overall, it's an ok transfer, just nothing to write home about.
We're treated to a rather unimpressive and flat sounding Dolby Digital Mono track. It's in Japanese with a pretty good English subtitle track though, and while it's not a particularly lively effort, dialogue is clear enough. Everything comes straight out of the center speaker and there is some hiss in a few spots, but you'll have no problem following along, and the soundtrack comes through with a nice amount of clarity.
We get a rather lackluster text piece on Fukasaku and a small stills gallery of roughly a dozen pieces.
The Final Word:
Kinji Fukasaku's Yakuza masterpiece is given a very mediocre treatment from Eureka. This film at least deserves a good looking and sounding release, if not the special edition treatment, but sadly, it hasn't found it with this release.