Urban redress

To understand Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Retribution, one needs to look beyond the apparitions that pop up throughout the film. One of the most crucial scenes is comparatively shock-free: as the protagonist, police detective Yoshioka (Koji Yakusho), approaches a waterway on the outskirts of Tokyo, the skipper of a boat - who brings to mind Charon, the ferryman of the dead across the River Styx to the underworld - motions to him to board. 'I'll show you something you might not want to see,' he says.

The hell-on-earth he shows Yoshioka is populated not by writhing human souls, but endless crumbling, vacant edifices that are abandoned to the elements when industrialists have finished with the riverside and moved on to more convenient and low-rent areas.

Coupled with the emphasis the film places on the obliteration of buildings and ferry lines ('to wipe everything out' is a phrase that's repeated by various characters throughout the film), it's evident that the film's title alludes to more than just human revenge.

Retribution is about the way a landscape can get its own back on the people who desert it in the name of progress, says Kurosawa. 'Now that big cities like Tokyo and Hong Kong are in perpetual reconstruction, old buildings tend to get overhauled and then forgotten.'

The Japanese capital is a prime example of how a city's architectural slate can be wiped clean every few decades, with regions left derelict and forlorn after war, earthquake or through years of overuse, the director says.

'So I was thinking, would there be a time when they would come to avenge the wrongs we did to them? The wiping-out of the past is an issue that this film tackles. As we relentlessly move forward and cast aside what we used to have, there's bound to be wrath. And such wrath could turn out to be a terrible thing.'