The Descendant (2007)

• 18% want to see it
  (34 ratings)

A young man trades one dangerous prison for another in this offbeat independent drama from Japanese filmmaker Shutaro Oku. When he was a teenager, Manuakata (Kazushi Watanabe) killed his mother in a fit of rage, and spent ten years behind bars. Now 25, Manuakata has been set free on a work-release… More A young man trades one dangerous prison for another in this offbeat independent drama from Japanese filmmaker Shutaro Oku. When he was a teenager, Manuakata (Kazushi Watanabe) killed his mother in a fit of rage, and spent ten years behind bars. Now 25, Manuakata has been set free on a work-release program, with a job waiting for him at an electronics firm in Kawasaki. By day, Manuakata repairs televisions, and each evening he returns to a grim little apartment, where all he has for company is a tiny TV that plays the same news report over and over again, occasionally interspersed with homemade pornography. One day, Manuakata is approached by a man (Tomorowo Taguchi) who is the leader of a strange religious cult, and he offers Manuakata a more lucrative job -- taking old television remote controls and transforming them into handguns. Kain no matsuei (aka Cain's Descendant) was screened as part of the 2007 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi