THE RAPACIOUS JAILBREAKER (1974) Radiance Films Blu-ray Review
From Radiance Films comes the 1974 Tolli Studios Japanese jailbreak action thriller drama with one of the more favorite titles I’ve been saying around the house lately. The rapacious jailbreaker. This is 97 minutes on Blu-ray from Sado Nakajima director with Hioki Matsucata Tatsu Umea and Naoko Otani. Apologies to all of those people and their descendants. It is in Japanese with optional English subtitles. The basic story based on a true story goes a little something like this. Not going to tell you the whole story. A man who is a criminal goes to jail and breaks out. And that just repeats throughout the entire movie. So in a nutshell, a man goes to jail and breaks out. It is wonderful. This is a guy who is this just like ferocious force of nature. He is a criminal. He has no real control over his emotions. And when he thinks something is wrong, he just will take it out on the person he thinks is the wrongdoer. And it there’s more to it than what I just said, but it really is. He gets put in jail and immediately he’s like, “How do I get out of here?” You see him formulate a plan and do it. And then he’s free and he runs and he runs and he’s free and his worst instincts take over and winds himself back in jail. And that’s just the story of this film, which sounds like it would be repetitive, but it’s not. It is uh wonderfully done. It is dramatic. It is arterial spray at times. It is uh comedic at times. And just seeing this guy run and run and run, you’re like, “Okay, this time cool. He’s out of jail. He’s going to stick with the straight and narrow. He’s not going to cross the law. He’s not going to let the his emotions get the better of him. Oh, no, wait. He’s in jail again.” Some of the escapes are great, too, where it’s like he’s being arraigned by the police and he just quickly runs gets and gets away. And uh it was just it was a very entertaining movie. There’s, as I said, there’s more to it over the the course of the film that I’m telling you, but I don’t want to give anything away. It is just, it just moves right along. It’s got this bouncy, funky score to it that makes it all the more fun. It is just the lead is just a cold, just badass guy. And uh, as I say, occasional cherry red arterial spray paints the screen should you want to, you know, test how bright your colors are. Uh, it’s just a it’s a fun tough guy crime film loaded with nudity and violence. Uh, and a pro protagonist who’s just uh has endless drive to be free and and wild doing what he does. Special features include a commentary by Nathan Stewart and an extra called Rulebreaker in Introduction to Saddow Nakajima visual essay by film historian Tom Mess that is 17 minutes long. The packaging looks a little something like this. So, with Radiance, as I always say, this right here is not actually part of the cover. It’s slipped in. So, if you don’t want to have that little Japanese style obi strip, you can just slip it out of there. Front and the back. Crack her open. And we see him uh jailbreaking rapaciously right there. And the crack it open. And the inside is an alternate poster, maybe original English language poster for that perhaps. And then the booklet again features photos, stills from the film and also frames from the film. And it features Escape as Vocation from 2025 by Earl Jackson and a review of the rapacious jailbreaker by Mas Masaharu Saitto from 1974. I like that they do that. They will often put a writing that is contemporary to the time of the film’s release in the extras so you can see how people viewed it in the context of the time. So, available on Blu-ray from Radiance Films is the really quite entertaining and I I smile a lot. It’s not like it’s overtly a pleasant film all the way through. It’s just if you like rough and tumble tough guy crime action films, the rep I get tongue tied. I’m so excited about it. The rapacious jailbreaker.
THE RAPACIOUS JAILBREAKER (1974), starring Hiroki Matsukata, Tatsuo Umemiya, and Naoko Ôtani. Directed by Sadao Nakajima.
Available on Blu-ray from Radiance Films.
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