Tatsumi
Asian Cinema
•
1h 48m
Tatsumi, an unassuming fisherman, makes his real livelihood by cleaning up dead bodies for local yakuza gangs. When criminal intrigue leads to the vicious murder of his ex-girlfriend by one of the gangsters, it thrusts her hot-headed teenage sister Aoi (a tour de force by ingénue Kokoro Morita) onto an unbridled path of vengeance. With his own personal motives in tow, Tatsumi vows to mentor and protect Aoi to the bitter end of her blood-soaked crusade. Gritty, mean and intense from the get-go, Tatsumi recalls the explosive “true document” yakuza films of celebrated director Kinji Fukasaku while adding a fresh perspective to its violent proceedings.
Director Hiroshi Shoji flexes his auteur chops with stylish panache that never belies the genre’s misanthropic DNA. His naturalistic direction and the cast’s breathtaking performances render Tatsumi a “tense, brutally realistic and an overall great film” (Asian Movie Pulse).
“A stellar work of genius on every level.” –Film Threat
DIRECTED BY HIROSHI SHOJI
JAPAN | 2023 | JAPANESE WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
Up Next in Asian Cinema
-
Great Absence
When Takashi (Mirai Moriyama) receives a call from the police, he is forced to reconnect with his estranged father, Yohji (Tatsuya Fuji), an esteemed academic slipping into dementia. As Takashi attempts to piece together the mystery of Yohji’s missing wife and the fractured life his father now in...
-
A Woman Called Sada Abe
Based on the shocking true story of a geisha and sex worker who accidentally killed her lover in a lustful haze of unbridled passion and kinky sex, A WOMAN CALLED SADA ABE is a watershed of hallucinatory erotic cinema. Director Noboru Tanaka, who rose to prominence as one of Nikkatsu’s leading Ro...
-
Watcher in the Attic
The second film in Noboru Tanaka’s “Showa Era Trilogy,” WATCHER IN THE ATTIC is an adaption of a short story by seminal Japanese novelist Edogawa Rampo. Starring Junko Miyashita (the second “Queen” of Nikkatsu’s Roman porno series) as Lady Minako, owner of a shabby boarding house in 1920s Tokyo, ...
