Mike
Bloomberg would approve of the way Chief Inspector Yoichi Morohoshi takes care
of business in Hokkaido. The questionable copper will make alliances with the
Yakuza, deal speed, and completely disregard civil liberties in order to “keep guns
off the streets.” Don’t you feel so much safer knowing he is based on the real
Yoshiaki Inaba? The convicted cop’s memoir has now been adapted as Kazuya Shiraishi’s
Twisted Justice (trailer here), the opening
night selection of the 2016 New York Asian Film Festival, starring Rising Star
Asia Award Winner Go Ayano.
The
only reason the Hokkaido police recruited Morohoshi was for his judo skills. He
held up his end of the bargain, leading their team to its first championship.
However, if he hopes to make it on the Sapporo force, he will have to start
scoring better on the competitive point system. The highest points are awarded for
the recovery of any sort of gun that can be directly linked to a criminal. That
obviously creates an incentive to plant guns on random lowlife fall guys. Of
course, to do that, Morohoshi will need an illicit source of firearms.
Fortunately, a local small time Yakuza and his Pakistani contractor are more
than willing to help, in exchange for Morohoshi’s protection.
Following
this strategy, with some degree of wink-wink-nudge-nudge approval from his
superiors, Morohoshi rides high for years. Inevitably, the party will end, most
likely with a bang rather than a whimper. Nevertheless, Morohoshi will survive
to be banished to the Yubari hinterlands, but this corrupt cop just doesn’t
know when to quit.
Beyond
the spot-on period trappings, Twisted has
a gritty, grimy 1970s vibe that recalls classics like Friedkin’s The French Connection, Shohei Imamura’s Vengeance is Mine, and Kinji Fukasaku’s Cops vs. Thugs. However, there is
nothing glamorous about Morohoshi’s debauchery. In fact, Shiraishi makes it uncomfortably
clear Morohoshi’s corruption leads to debasement rather than empowerment.
Seriously, you do not want to be him.
Still,
you have to admire the way Ayano dives into Morohoshi’s depraved and erratic persona.
He fully commits to all the excesses and humiliations. Thanks to his work, Twisted becomes an epic of personal
self-destruction. However, Pierre Taki scene-stealing reaches kleptomaniacal levels
as the hedonistic Det. Sadao Murai, the old, slightly crooked salt, who first
shows Morohoshi how to bend the rules to his advantage. Likewise, the
performance of Gravure (pin-up) Idol-turned actress Haruna Yabuki as the
hostess-lover Morohoshi leads even further astray is nakedly open and honest,
in every sense.
