I’ve identified about Riki-Oh (aka The Story of Ricky) and its supremely over-the-top violence for many years. Whether or not it was seeing grotesque(ly superior) moments from the unique manga by Takajou Masahiko and Saruwatari Tetsuya, or animated gifs of essentially the most ridiculous scenes from the 1991 Hong Kong film directed by Lam Nai-Choi, these pictures stick with an individual. After I lastly received round to watching that movie adaptation, I assumed I used to be prepared for what I used to be about to see. What nobody ever advised me was simply how a lot Riki-Oh speaks to a nascent prison-industrial complicated that has solely grown horrifically stronger by 2024.
The opening narration textual content establishes that Riki-Oh takes place sooner or later yr of 2001, the place one thing horrifying has occurred: All authorities organizations has been privatized, together with prisons.
Seeing this made my eyes widen in shock. When for-profit personal prisons plague the USA and deal with its inmates within the cruelest methods doable, when Hong Kong itself is having its rights taken away, and when there may be precise speak about privatizing state and federal penitentiaries within the US, this film feels virtually prescient. I don’t understand how a lot of that is from the unique manga and the way a lot is a top quality of the film, nevertheless it’s a hell of an establishing message to place in the beginning.
Then, our hero, Lik-Wong (actually Riki-Oh in Chinese language) reveals up among the many latest batch of convicts. He’s impossibly cool and robust, residing with 5 bullets lodged in his chest and possessing the facility to punch individuals so onerous, their physique elements explode. To say he’s minimize from the identical material as Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star can be an understatement. However one factor is straight away clear about him: Whereas he’s able to astounding acts of lethality, he would relatively there be respect for human dignity, and so tries to indicate restraint. Nonetheless, ought to somebody trample on that humanity, Lik-Wong’s prepared to offer them some penalties for his or her actions. He believes strongly in peace, however won’t protect a false one within the absence of justice.
And so Lik-Wong will get into many battles and punches holes in his foes and cleaves their limbs off with the facility of his qi gong. He’s a manga hero delivered to life. However the actually attention-grabbing portrayals come from the opposite prisoners, each individually and as a complete. Some are brutal and unrepentant criminals who’ve gotten in with the equally malicious guards for their very own egocentric profit. Others are good individuals solely in there because of a corrupt justice system. Those that are victimized by the jail and its warden, together with getting used as slave labor for unlawful drug manufacturing, rally behind Lik-Wong and even acquire inspiration to combat again due to him.
However Lik-Wong, for his half, understands that you may’t maintain him up as the usual of what a traditional individual can do. When his fellow inmates resist orders to bury him alive, our hero tells them to do it anyway. They should keep away from incurring the wrath of the warden and keep alive to withstand tomorrow. By the tip, the prisoners stage a mass revolt whereas Lik-Wong fights the superhuman monsters that make up the jail’s strongest fighters. Lik-Wong is singularly distinctive, however even he can’t do it alone.
So we’re left with a film that includes essentially the most off-the-wall feats of dismemberment and disembowelment as carried out by a really colourful solid of characters, and beneath all of it are some profound questions. Why will we allow the utter dehumanization of prisoners whereas permitting prisons to revenue off their enslavement? Why will we enable individuals with such a possibility for corruption to wield such energy over individuals? Sadly, we now have no Riki-Ohs or Lik-Wongs in the actual world, however we do have the power to rally round those that consider in compassionate justice that protects the susceptible, and to work collectively to make a distinction.
