It is a simple story, beautifully told. Detective Kuroiwa Ryu (Tetsuya Watari — Tokyo Drifter, as Goro in the Outlaw series) makes one little, itty-bitty, minor mistake. He’s a crime fighter, make no mistake about that (he is even willing to cut a few corners to get the job done), but he crosses the line when he falls in love with the widow of a Nishida-clan “gangster” that he killed in the line of duty.
This “transgression” will take him down an ever-expanding rabbit-hole that will not end well. We know this in our heart from the get-go, We sense that he is a dead man walking. It is the getting to his predestined end — yes, you can call Yakuza Graveyard a passion play — that makes Fukasaku’s tale a classic.
Bonus features are a pair of featurettes — “Appreciation by Filmmaker Kazuya Shiraishi” and “The Rage and the Passion’ — plus an extensive photo gallery.
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