A Fugitive From The Past Blu-ray

I recomend this masterpiece to everybody that likes cinema, and special the Japanese Noir cinema. A long amazing movie, with a special cinematography and great actors. 10/10.

As for the physical release itself, A Fugitive From the Past comes in of the best HD digital masters I've seen of a classic Japanese film like this (short of a full 2K or 4K restoration). A/V quality is amazing across the board, and despite the older source material used, I feel like that extra bit of restoration work on Arrow's part made the difference. But this disc also comes with some really enlightening commentaries that shouldn't be missed by any Japanese Cinema fans like myself. The movie, though... Honestly, I think this might be the best crime drama, the best murder mystery, the best procedural, the best tragic romance; very possibly the best movie. And a pleasant surprise, these three hours speed by with the most kinetic visual design to ever accompany such unbelievably epic, detailed storytelling. From start to finish, this is a deeply riveting, utterly haunting, absolutely transfixing experience that takes the conventions and expectations of pulp fiction cinema to turn that framework inside out and showcase a new kind of crime thriller. With A Fugitive From the Past, Tomu Uchida successfully crafted the most potently psychological study of criminal activity I think I've ever seen and its intersecting dynamics with family life, morality, responsibility, judgement and justice, truth, and the power words can have over others. With its undeniable post-modern arthouse sensibilities, this movie is a visual and sonic microcosm of investigations into perception, belief, human behavior, and the relationships that define everyday people. But even on top of that, A Fugitive From the Past also manages to have the courage to operate as a counter-cultural meditation on social inequity, the terrible consequences of a damaged social structure, and the dehumanizing, desensitizing effects of communal trauma, the growth of capitalism's global toxicity, and ethical corruption as an answer to real world issues and the animalistic side of humanity. The Buddhist elements, too, add an extra intriguing layer of spiritual adventure, as the visceral action of the story and its weighty emotional core mix with heavy, abstract inquiries of both philosophical and existential flavors, further emphasizing Uchida's interests in exposing the darkly poetic and often tortuous nature of this thing we call our existence and place in the universe. Imagine blending the styles and sensibilities of Scorsese and Fincher, Bergman and Antonioni, Kurosawa and Bong Joon-ho, and just funneling it all through a surrealist-tinged nightmare odyssey of love, betrayal, tragedy, and murder, with a good twist of mystic, socially-conscious tones and ideas. That's what you'll find here.