Wolves, Pigs & Men Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

Wolves, Pigs & Men Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov August 5, 2024

Kinji Fukasaku's "Wolves, Pigs and Men" (1964) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Eureka Entertainment. The supplemental features on the release include recent program with producer Toru Yoshida; recent program with screenwriter Junya Sato; archival program with Kinji Fukasaku's biographer Sadao Yamane; exclusive new audio commentary by critic Jasper Sharp; and restored original trailer. In Japanese, with optional English subtitles for the main feature. Region-B "locked".

Come back. You are one of us.

Pigsty. It is how the three brothers describe their provincial hometown. They also agree that it is a place where all decent people are doomed to spend their entire lives overwhelmed by crime and misery. However, each brother sees the future and the pigsty’s role in it differently.

The youngest one, Sabu (Kinya Kitaoji), and his best friends have formed a small gang, sworn to be loyal to each other, and agreed to fight all rules multiplying the losers in the pigsty. A single rebel would be easy to defeat, but several loyal rebels can put up a good fight, do some lasting damage to the pigsty, and maybe even change it from within. If they fail, they will cheat to avoid being like the doomed.

The second brother, Jiro (Ken Takakura), is a pragmatist, not a rebel, and he has chosen to leave the pigsty. Across the ocean, in America, Jiro and his girlfriend (Sanae Nakahara) can be truly free and start a new chapter in their lives. Jiro should have realized that leaving is the only way to beat the pigsty five, maybe even ten years earlier, but a man in his late thirties is still very young, so he will leave now.

The eldest brother, Ichiro (Rentaro Mikuni), has figured out a different way to beat the pigsty. Ichiro has joined the Iwasaki clan, the most powerful criminal organization in the area whose members are immune to the pigsty’s misery, and already slowly started moving up its hierarchy ladder. With the money and protection of the Iwasaki clan, Ichiro has relocated to a safe, upscale bubble where only the winners live.

To get the money he needs to travel to America, Jiro and another desperate gangster (Shinjiro Ehara) set up a dangerous heist -- stealing forty million yen in cash and drugs from couriers working for the Iwasaki clan. To assist them as decoys at the local airport, Jiro then offers Sabu and his rebels fifty thousand yen each and masterminds a different scheme to cheat everyone, including his partner. The heist goes as planned, but when Sabu discovers that his brother is paying him and his friends only a tiny fraction of the loot, he hides it and refuses to disclose its location, unleashing a string of violent confrontations. Meanwhile, the Iwasaki clan dispatches Ichiro to track down Jiro and Sabu and prove that he is loyal to it by recovering what they have stolen and punishing them for daring to disrespect it.

Directed by Kinji Fukasaku in 1964, Wolves, Pigs, and Men is as much of a crime film as it is a political film. In fact, considering the ideological precision with which it attacks the post-war social structure in Japan, it is obvious that its politics were meant to be the catalyst of its drama, and this would indicate that it was conceived as a political film. If one keeps this in mind, the over-the-top violence suddenly begins looking entirely justified, too. Why exactly? The answer is spelled out at the beginning of the film where the cheaters are identified as the only group of people capable of thriving in the pigsty, which later is effectively revealed to be a policy-generated social cancer.

Cinematographer Ichiro Hoshijima positions and moves the camera in a variety of different ways, producing quite a few unorthodox close-ups and panoramic shots. However, at the same time, several of Seijun Suzuki's crime films were already doing some genuinely wild things to impress.

Wolves, Pigs & Men Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in an aspect ratio of 2.39:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Wolves, Pigs, and Men arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Eureka Entertainment.

The overall quality of the presentation is very good. In a few areas, trained eyes will spot fluctuations that affect the dynamic range of the visuals, which produce unevenness in darker backgrounds, but delineation, clarity, and depth remain pleasing. In select darker areas, grain exposure could have been slightly better, too. However, there are no traces of problematic digital corrections, so even on a very large screen the entire film boasts a nice organic appearance. Image stability is good. A few small blemishes can be spotted, but there are no large cut, debris, warped or torn frames to report. My score is 4.25/5.00. (Note: This is a Region-B "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-B or Region-Free player in order to access its content).

Wolves, Pigs & Men Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one standard audio track on this Blu-ray release: Japanese LPCM 2.0. Optional English subtitles are provided for the main feature. When turned on, they appear inside the image frame.

The lossless track is very healthy. Even if the volume is turned up a lot, the upper register does not reveal any weaknesses, such as instability, thinning, hiss, etc. Dynamic intensity is good, too. In fact, in several areas the music creates rather surprisingly good contrasts. The English translation is excellent. Also, I really like the size of the English subtitles.

Wolves, Pigs & Men Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Socially Aware Violence - in this program, screenwriter Junya Sato discusses his first encounter with Kinju Fukasaku, the decision to set Wolves, Pigs, and Men in a slum and Fukasaku's initial lack of enthusiasm for it, Ken Takakura's unusually violent character, the film's noirish overtones, etc. The program is shared by Eureka Entertainment and Film Movement. In Japanese, with English subtitles. (21 min).

• Slums, Stars, & Studios - in this program, producer Toru Yoshida discusses his working relationship with Kinju Fukasaku (together the two made seven films) and the fact that shoots were always very intense and even dangerous, his favorite Fukasaku film (Graveyard of Honor), the decision to work with screenwriter Junya Sato and shoot Wolves, Pigs, and Men in a slum, the film's reception and specifically why it did not become a hit, etc. The program is shared by Eureka Entertainment and Film Movement. In Japanese, with English subtitles. (21 min).

• Sadao Yamane on "Wolves, Pigs, and Men" - in this archival program, Kinji Fukasaku's biographer Sadao Yamane discusses the conception and production of Wolves, Pigs, and Men, the film's strengths (and why he considers it the masterpiece of Fukasaku's early period), a conflict that occurred because of Ken Takakura's simultaneous involvement with another period project, and Japan's post-war transformation and its representation in Fukasaku's work. The program was produced in 2017 for an earlier project. In Japanese, with English subtitles. (13 min).

• Commentary - this exclusive new audio commentary was recorded by critic Jasper Sharp. The bulk of the comments address the production history of Wolves, Pigs, and Men, the socio-economic environment in which the film was conceived and shot, the rivalry between the three brothers and some key themes that are attached to it, and Kinji Fukasaku's body of work and career.

• Trailer - presented here is a fully restored original trailer for Wolves, Pigs, and Men. In Japanese, with English subtitles. (3 min).

• Booklet - a collector's booklet featuring new writing by Japanese cinema expert Joe Hickinbottom and technical credits.

Wolves, Pigs & Men Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If you pair Wolves, Pigs & Men with Rocco and His Brothers, you will quickly discover that the two have plenty in common. Both come from the 1960s and tell stories about brothers risking their lives to escape a post-war reality defined by extreme, often genuinely disturbing contrasts. Kinji Fukasaku's biographer Sadao Yamane declares that Wolves, Pigs & Men is the masterpiece of the iconic director's early period, and I think that he is correct. If you decide to add it to your library, I encourage you to also grab Eureka Entertainment's recent box set with the three Abashiri Prison films, which feature a terrific Ken Takakura, too. VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.