The concept of imprisonment and release has been repeatedly explored in Japanese cinema, although the truth is that most of these movies usually revolve around the Yakuza. Go Furukawa, in his feature debut, takes a completely different approach, as he focuses on the issues of visitation and delivering in local prisons, through a man who runs a service like that.
Kaneko’s Commissary is screening at Festival International des Cinemas d’Asie de Vesoul
Shinji, a man who was imprisoned due to his violent tendencies, continues to be violent even towards his wife, Miwako, when she visits him in prison. Eventually, though, he manages to change with the help of his family, including his newborn son, wife and his uncle who is also staying with them. Furthermore, as soon as he is out of prison, he starts running a commissary named after his wife, which provides service for delivering items to prisons and detention centers on behalf of the detainees’ families. His services, apart from delivering goods, also include the reading of letters towards the prisoners. Gradually, he achieves the peace he and his family always wanted.
Things change, however, when one of his son’s classmates, Karin, is found dead, and the murderer’s mother asks for Shinji’s services. Furthermore, another murder by a formerly imprisoned yakuza, Takashi, which seems to involve forced prostitution and a highschool girl, Sachi, complicates things even more, since the lawyer of the case is a friend and also needs a big favor. Gradually, Shinji starts feeling the pressure piling up again, particularly when he feels his son is threatened.
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Allow me to start with the negative. There are too many things happening here at the same time, and too many characters involved in the story, to the point that, after some time, it becomes evident that the script would be better suited to a series. As such, there are some characters in particular which could have been explored much better, since their arcs seem quite interesting. Apart from this though, there are very few issues and many more traits in the movie.
For starters, the exploration of the prison laws regarding delivering and visitation, and the whole concept of the commissary is quite intriguing by themselves, particularly since they have not been explored before in Japanese cinema, at least as far as this writer knows. The way Furukawa uses these two as his base in order to present his characters, and particularly the concept of whether people can truly change is equally impressive to watch. Especially the fact that he explores Shinji’s violent tendencies and Takashi’s criminal ones, as a sort of addiction, only to show that there are different perspectives to this concept, is one of the movie’s best traits.
Furthermore, the way this aspect, and particularly Shinji’s dictate the story essentially, works quite well here, additionally because Ryuhei Maruyama is quite convincing in both aspects of his character. Yoko Maki as his wife is also good, especially in the ways she reacts to his behavior, while repeatedly highlighting how decent a person she is. Takumi Kitamura as the murderer gives a chilling performance. Masahiro Komoto as the lawyer and Mana Kawaguchi as Sachi are also memorable, although the last three characters do suffer from the issue of underdevelopment mentioned above.
Tomoo Ezaki’s cinematography captures the different settings with realism, in a low key fashion which also includes the lighting, that definitely suits the story. Konishi Tomoka’s editing results in a relatively fast pace, in order to fit all the episodes in the 126 minutes of the movie while some transitions, especially in the beginning, could have been handled better. As a whole though, the pacing does work well.
Although some issues with the script structure do exist, “Kaneko’s Commissary” has enough unique and quite interesting elements to move beyond any shortcomings, while it is definitely well-shot, acted, and directed. All in all, a more than hopeful debut.
