Graveyard of Honor

In 1975 Kinji Fukasaku took the life of a real yakuza, Rikio Ishikawa, and dropped it like a charge into the middle of his own genre. Ishikawa rises through postwar Tokyo, joins the organisation and then breaks every rule it has: he shoots his own boss, is exiled, sinks into drugs, comes back and sinks again. The film treats his descent less as tragedy than as a record of collapse, complete with dates stamped on screen, a documentary narrator and a hand-held camera that never settles. Most yakuza pictures are built on honour, debt and belonging. This one centres a man who has none of the three, and it never once asks you to move closer to him. Who it's for: viewers after Fukasaku's dishonour streak and the harshest end of postwar Japanese crime cinema. Who it's not for: anyone who wants a code, a loyalty, or a character to hold on to; there is nobody here to hold.