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The story of a detective driven to solve the murder of an unknown woman in red, Retribution is dark, quiet, and introspective. The detective, Yoshioka, has a quiet home life with a woman named Harue, and his work on the police force is equally terse. He is called out to a murder scene, where a woman in red has been drowned in a puddle of sea water. The crime immediately gets under Yoshioka’s skin, and within ten minutes of the film, he’s questioning his own guilt and sanity. It’s quite a leap to take so soon – there just isn’t enough plot to back it up yet.

But the film continues. Soon enough, Yoshioka is being visited by the ghost of the woman in red, who appears silently. She is a little eerie, and a great deal more solid and real looking than the ghosts of Ringu or Ju-on. It’s an interesting and valiant attempt at standing out, but unfortunately for the audience, the ghost moves like a grown-up playing monster with an easily frightened child. She repeatedly frightens Yoshioka into solving the murder, though from my standpoint the scariest thing about her were her swollen collagen inflated lips.

The plot rolls on; murders are solved rather easily, and we constantly yo-yo back and forth, wondering “is Yoshioka crazy? Is he the murderer?” Your typical plot devices are all here – the partner who noses around too much for his own good, the shrink who tries to help but winds up getting psyched out himself.

Thankfully, the movie ends (it’s almost two hours long – I actually napped between the first and second hours). The ghost shows us her last big boo moment (and that was a little disturbing – in one shot, which is the background for the extras menu, she looks just like a freaky, pale Michael Jackson), and the movie ends, leaving us with a sense of dismay.

According to filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa, each murder represents the loss of a potential future. Thinking back, in the context of the film this analogy works. I’m not sure if it’s a sad state of the film that I had to have this pointed out to me, or if I needed a longer nap to regain a sharpened state of mind. Possibly both.

As far as the extras go, the best by far was the collection of trailers – or, to be more specific, one of my favorite things in a film – R rated trailers. A sequel to Ju-on is among the dizzying line of R rated trailers, as well as a hilarious sequel to the Japanese The Eye. There are also alternate endings. In the commentary Kurosawa says that the original ending would have left audiences dissatisfied. I nodded enthusiastically at that comment).

Also included is opening day Q&A footage with cast and crew, where we learn just how darned polite the cast is. One extra feature that goes unmentioned is how hard the DVD case is to get open. Prepare to struggle with poorly made security stickers that will leave your case marred for life.

In summary, where Retribution is concerned, the key word is mediocrity. It’s not awful, but it’s not great, either. 

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