Product Review

"What is it with this forest?" That is the question for disgraced Tokyo detective Goro Yabuike (Kôji Yakusho, Shall We Dance), who finds himself embroiled in a tense struggle revolving around a gnarled, forbidding tree. Goro has fled Tokyo after a hostage crisis escalates into tragic violence. He finds himself in a remote forest where the surrounding vegetation is diseased, the streams are polluted, and other trees are dying or dead. Is the solitary tree rare, or a mutation? An eccentric caretaker fiercely protects the tree from a group of forest rangers who want to profit from it and a botanist who insists that the toxic tree must be destroyed. Can Goro redeem himself, and "restore the rules of the world?" This provocative thriller is a dramatic departure for international award-winning genre filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Séance), one of the brightest stars of Japan’s New Wave.