Hideyuki Hirayama’s Lady Joker was inspired by a 1984 kidnapping of a candy company president that was never solved. Its whodunit element, however, is less important that its examination of men and women caught in a downward spiral of corruption, discrimination, poverty and death. Revenge, says the proverb, is a dish best eaten cold - but in this film it is like a bill with penalties compounded for a lifetime, until the only possible payment is lives, careers and a company’s reputation.
Based on a best-selling novel by Takamura Kaoru thought hard, if not impossible, to film, Lady Joker is hard to classify - it’s a bit of everything, from cop thriller to social drama. Also, instead of drawing the bad guys and good guys in contrasting black and white, Chong Wishing’s script and Hirayama’s treatment paints them in shades of gray - with the kidnapper heroes being among the grayest.
Their leader is Moroi Seizo, an elderly, by still fiery drugstore owner. The others are Handa, a cynical police detective, Matsudo, a punkish shop rat, Ko, a street-smart credit union employee, and Nunokawa, a short-fused truck driver whose teenage daughter, nicknamed Lady, is speechless and confined to a wheelchair.
The kidnappers, who call themselves Lady Joker, represent the range of Japan’s outsiders: Ko is an ethnic Korean, Moroi is descended from the "untouchable" (burakumin) class and Matsudo was rejected by his girlfriend’s upper-class parents because "he’s not our sort." Lady is an outsider by the nature of her disability. And Handa? As a "non-career" (rank-and-file) detective he is forever denied promotion to the upper ranks, while so-called "career" cops, usually from elite universities, are bound for glory from the beginning.
Hollywood would have its dirty heroes raise a one-fingered salute to their oppressors - and triumphing even in defeat. Hirayama, the director of some of the most truthful and entertaining Japanese films of recent years, including FEFJ selections Laughing Frog and Out, is more realistic - and thus despairing. The forecast for Lady Joker’s millions of fellow outsiders is cloudy.