Onibi: The Fire Within

Toronto International Film Festival Program Guide
1996

Onibi | Onibi: The Fire Within
Rokuro Mochizuki
JAPAN, 1996
101 minutes Colour/35mm
Production Company: Gaga Communications
Executive Producer: Hiroshi Yaman
Producer: Yoshinori Chiba, Toshiki Kimura
Screenplay: Toshiyuki Morioka
Cinematographer: Naomasa Imaizumi
Editor: Yasushi Shimanura
Production Designer: Hirohide Shibata
Sound: Yukiya Satoh
Music: Ken-ichi Kamio
Principal Cast: Yoshio Harada, Reiko Kataoka, Sho Aikawa, Eiji Okuda
Production: Gaga Communications

While the Japanese gangster film has a long and venerable history, in recent years this tradition has been given a major shot in the arm by a celebrated group of filmmakers, including Takeshi Kitano, whose Fireworks is playing in this Festival. This group also includes Rokuro Mochizuki, whose last film was the internationally acclaimed Another Lonely Hitman. Not for him Takeshi Kitano’s macho romantics or goofballs like Kaizo Hayashi’s Miku Hama; Rokuro created instead a fully realized, deadly serious philosopher, intent on seeing his vision of justice carried out.

Rokuro’s new film, Onibi: The Fire Within, amplifies the themes and concerns of his last outing with even greater success. Again this film comes from an original story by Yukio Yamanouchi, the former legal consultant of Yamaguchi-gumi, the largest crime syndicate in Japan. His unique experiences have yielded a number of novels about unusually intriguing figures within the gangster brotherhood and Rokuro’s cool, performance-driven style seems best suited to adapting his work.

Once called “Ball of Fire” for his prodigious killing ability, Kunihiro is released from prison. But his former colleagues now seem only interested in money and self-preservation. He decides to go straight, rejecting an offer of work from Tanigawa, a lieutenant in another gang. He ends up living with his prison friend, the flamboyantly gay Sakata. After a spell of manual labour, Kunihiro is finally persuaded to re-enter the gangster world as a driver. Still disgusted by the new leadership, he takes refuge in an increasingly intimate friendship with Asako, a piano player at a classy nightclub. Her past seems even more complicated than Kunihiro’s and she is unable to assist him with his existential crisis as he plummets deeper and deeper into a world he has come to hate.

Kunihiro is completely driven by his own code of ethics: death befalls those who deserve it without mercy; those people with good hearts get full protection. This Melville-like cool and steely resolve plays out perfectly in the hands of Yoshio Harada, a veteran of outlaw roles for the likes of Seijun Suzuki and Masahiro Shinoda in the seventies. Frequently spiced with moments of quixotic humour—much of it driven by Kunihiro’s extremely unusual relationship with Sakata—Onibi: The Fire Within is a thoughtful, beautifully crafted journey into the soul of an honourable man.
—Noah Cowan