A murderer's last 15 years tick away on a ship where nobody is who they claim.
On a passenger ship to Japan, the journalist Kawase encounters a man who claims to be a Filipino, but Kawase believes he is a murder suspect who fled Japan fifteen years ago, Hojo Shuichi. To throw Kawase off, the man talks a female passenger, Reiko, into acting as if she was his long-time friend. When the man - who is, in fact, Hojo - secretly leaves the ship, Reiko, who has fallen for him, joins up with Kawase to go looking for him. Meanwhile, Hojo, who has returned to Japan to find the true murderer before the 15-year statute of limiitations on murder expires, tracks down the man whom he believes ordered the murder he was accused of.
Acting
Ishihara's smoldering restraint as a man playing dead while still breathing.
Direction
Matsuo squeezes claustrophobia from open ocean and vast city alike.
Writing
The 15-year deadline turns legal procedure into existential horror.
Director
Akinori Matsuo
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Japan's 15-year murder statute (abolished 2010) haunted postwar noir; this film treats the deadline as tragic inevitability.
Ishihara was Japan's biggest star—imagine Elvis doing Hitchcock—and this rare departure into moral ambiguity alienated some fans.
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