While a varied career, it's fair to say Koji Yakusho has a penchant for playing ex-convicts adapting to life in the outside world after an extended period behind bars for murder. Two of his more acclaimed roles saw him play the straight, but prone to outbursts, salaryman of Yamashita in Shohei Imamura's "The Eel" (1997); and the enigmatic manipulator Misumi in Kore-eda Hirokazu's "The Third Murder" (2017).
As Masao in Miwa Nishikawa's all-rounder "Under the Open Sky" he is a more outwardly aggressive former yakuza who has had various troubles on the inside, failing to control his anger. Having served thirteen years for the murder of an unruly customer at the hostess bar he managed, he moves to Tokyo to start his new life. But health problems, his ex-convict status and fits of rage see him struggle to hold down normal, everyday employment.
Having sent them his prison records, he is followed by struggling director Tsunoda (Taiga Nakano) to make a TV documentary about his rehabilitation into society. There are many barriers Masao has to overcome to get by, though perhaps the main one is holding his temper. But as a man of justice, he finds he has to walk the lines of what is lawful and unlawful and what is right and wrong.
Like with previous Nishikawa works, this is a considered piece about a man going through a difficult situation, though it is not without its flaws. With a somewhat mainstream appeal, the film can be a little unbalanced in its portrait of Masao. At times, he is a man with inner turmoil, struggling to come to terms with his difficult upbringing, handled sensitively in flashback. Suppressing these outbursts gives him a darker side.
But at times his bouts of aggression and outright violence are more comedic and bumbling, and so we're not fully sure what to make of Masao as a lovable rogue, or a more sinister threat to wider society.
His threat to society is a wider social comment featured throughout. Gatekeepers at the various institutions with which he needs to apply and register outline the difficulties he will face as an ex-convict. His driver's license has now expired, but he cannot raise the funds/benefits to take the test again. Jobs will ignore him, apart from those where skills are minimal, so society's misfits will be taken in.
What is more of a struggle, however, is individuals' responses to him. While society prohibits him, the people he becomes close to all form a quick bond with him. They are all a little too happy to help him - a man who has often been aggressive, if not violent, towards them - and so go against the idea of ex-convicts struggling to find a place in society. In many ways, Masao adapts quite well. Those situations where he doesn't are more played for laughs.
Obviously, Yakusho is charming in the lead role, showing an ability to wear a variety of faces. The violence is hard-hitting, the laughs are welcome, with the more sinister elements to Masao giving it some edge. Making the move back into society is an administrative affair, with many details considered.
But in trying to satisfy all these points it can lapse into a mainstream comedy where a small community pulls together in one direction for the greater good. The ending comes with emotion more forced than fully earned. Masao is a complex character, but, as with Yamashita and Misumi before him, the more sinister elements are more engaging.
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