In 1964, as a police caravan escorts to prison notorious serial killer Iwao Enokizu (Ogata), we flash back to his early home life with brutish, hard-line Catholic father Shizuo (Mikuni), and later, his conflicted sexual relationship with wife Kazuko (Baisho). Triggered by some irrational rage, Enokizu one day savagely murders two money lenders and goes on the lam, assuming different identities and taking refuge in a brothel run by Haru (Ogawa). As police close in, the body count rises. 

What drives a man to kill? Are monsters created by society or an inner compulsion? This complex and twisted psychological thriller by Japanese master-of-the-sordid Shohei Imamura ("The Eel") tries to answer that question while shrouding its killer, chillingly played by Ogata, in moral ambivalence. Based on a sensational true story about a psychopath who terrorized Japan on a 78-day crime spree, "Vengeance" is part police procedural, part character study, obliquely linking Enokizu's ugly impulses to a number of factors — social, sexual, and familial — without arriving at definite conclusions. You won't soon forget this tightly wound shocker.