Shield of Straw

Shield of Straw
Directed by	Takashi Miike
Produced by	Naoaki Kitajima Shigeji Maeda Misako Saka
Written by	Tamio Hayashi
Based on	Wara no Tate by Kazuhiro Kiuchi
Starring	Takao Osawa Nanako Matsushima Tatsuya Fujiwara Tsutomu Yamazaki
Music by	Kôji Endô
Cinematography	Nobuyasu Kita
Edited by	Kenji Yamashita
Production company	NTV OLM Straw Shield Production Committee
Distributed by	Warner Bros. (Japan)
Release dates	26 April 2013 (2013-04-26)
Running time	125 minutes
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese

Shield of Straw (Japanese: 藁の楯, Hepburn: Wara no Tate) is a 2013 Japanese spy thriller film directed by Takashi Miike.^[1] It was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival^[2] and was scheduled for release in the spring of 2013.^[3]

Plot

Ninagawa was a powerful man in Japanese politics and with top economic connections. His granddaughter is then murdered. The suspect is Kunihide Kiyomaru (Tatsuya Fujiwara). Kunihide Kiyomaru has a prior conviction for assaulting and killing a girl 8 years ago. The police could never apprehend the suspect in the prior killing. Three months after the murder of his granddaughter, Ninagawa places a whole page ad in the 3 big Japanese newspapers. The ad then states that if Kiyomaru was executed, Ninagawa will offer 1,000,000,000 as a reward. Meanwhile, Kunihide Kiyomaru sees the ad and begins to fear for his life. Kunihide Kiyomaru then turns himself in at the Fukuoka Police Station. Five detectives from the security section (SP) of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department travel to Fukuoka to escort Kunihide Kiyomaru back to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. The distance between Fukuoka and Tokyo is apprixmately 1,200 km.

During their fateful trip, a significant portion of the Japanese population plot to kill Kunihide Kiyomaru. Before the police department can transport Kiyomaru to Tokyo, one of the police officers in the Fukuoka Police Station attempted a failed attempt to kill Kiyomaru, before being stopped by another police officer. This caused Kiyomaru to be sent to a nearby hospital, where he met the five detectives for the first time. There, a nurse tried to inject a fatal fluid into Kiyomaru indirectly, but was halted and arrested by the police just before she injected the fluid into Kiyomaru. A few days later, the plan to send Kiyomaru by plane was cancelled as they found a gun with the flight engineer, which was also arrested. Following the urgency of sending Kiyomaru to Tokyo, the police sent a team of over 50 police cars and 5 highly secured prison buses, with Kiyomaru and the five detectives in the second bus.

Shortly after the start of the journey, a truck carrying highly flammable gas/liquid was heading towards the police in reverse. The police cars all halted immediately, trying to stop the truck. Then, one of the detectives, Kazuki Mekari (Takao Osawa) jumped to the top of a police car and attempted to shoot the truck driver with a pistol. Then, the truck flunk up, turning upside down, about to crash into Mekari. Mekari ran for his life as another detective in the bus, Atsuko Shiraiwa (Nanako Matsushima) drove the bus in reverse to prevent Kiyomaru from being killed. Mekari barely escapes from the explosion and the head of the police department, Ohki, decides to cancel the plan, but orders the detectives to stay in the bus with Kiyomaru until further notice.

Just at that moment, two police officers knocked on the door of the bus and requested to enter. Mekari opens the door but Shiraiwa halts him, but the two police officers managed to enter, attacking the crew with their own pistols. Two of the detectives, Masaki Kamihashi (Kento Nagayama) and Mekari attacks the police officers, with no casualties except for the police officers. The police officers were also arrested. Following the cancelling of the current plan, the police headquarters then requested the detectives and Kiyomaru to be sent to Tokyo by a Maglev train. They smuggled him into the train from a nearby train station, in the seventh car. After a while, Shiraiwa noticed something tracking them from a website made by Ninagawa. It states their current location, allowing people to easily locate and kill him. Somewhere in between the journey, someone tried to shoot Kiyomaru, but shot Kenji Sekiya (Masato Ibu) and Kamihashi instead. At the next station, all the passengers were forced to leave the train as paramedics sent the two detectives to hospital. There, a man holding a butcher knife grabs hold of a 5-year-old girl and forces the police to hand out Kiyomaru, or he will kill the girl. The police managed to shoot him just before he can harm the little girl. The girl and her mother leaves without harm.

They continue with the plan after the station stop, but stopped after realising that there are obstacles in front of them. The crew followed the tracks until they saw a car with someone inside. They hitchhiked a ride to Tokyo. On the way, the driver, who is the murdered girl's father, attempts to stab Kiyomaru with a pocketknife. The plan fails with the man being thrown out of the car while the others escape with it. Then, after suspecting one of the only detectives left, Takeshi Okumora with giving out their location, the crew removes a micro chip from his hand and handcuffed him to a truck. The crew then flagged a taxi to Tokyo. On the journey, Kiyomaru realised by radio that his mother had committed suicide. He broke down and requested to stop. While Mekari was talking to the police department, Kiyomaru then shot Shiraiwa. When Mekari noticed, he attacked Kiyomaru without killing him. Then, at a highway, Mekari surrendered Kiyomaru to the police. Ninagawa then bought himself and his crew to the police block, taking out a katana, attempting to kill Kiyomaru. Ninagawa was halted by Mekari, who calmed him down. Then, Kiyomaru got hold of the katana and proceeds to kill Ninagawa. Mekari then got stabbed by Kiyomaru in an attempt to save Ninagawa. The police then took Kiyomaru back for the death penalty and Ninagawa for further investigation. Before Kiyomaru was executed, he said his last words as: "I regret. If I knew I was going to get the death penalty, I would have murdered more." It was unknown on how he was executed. At the end of the movie, it was shown that Mekari was walking with Shiraiwa's son, although it was never known if the other four detectives survived or not.

Cast

• Takao Osawa - Kazuki Mekari
• Nanako Matsushima - Atsuko Shiraiwa
• Tatsuya Fujiwara - Kunihide Kiyomaru
• Masatō Ibu - Kenji Sekiya
• Kento Nagayama - Masaki Kamihashi
• Kimiko Yo - Chikako Yuri
• Tsutomu Yamazaki - Ninagawa

Remake

On October 24th, 2016, it was announced that Europacorp is planning an English-language remake to be penned by Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt.^[4][5]

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Shield of Straw.

• Official website (Japanese)
• Shield of Straw at the Internet Movie Database