When Yûsaku Matsuda played the Yakuza boss who outsmarts Michael Douglas in the opening of Black Rain, American audiences had no clue about the actor. Even though 1989 was the middle of the VHS era, your average video rental store’s “Foreign Section” might have had a shelf dedicated to Japanese cinema and most of the titles were directed by Akira Kurosawa or starred Godzilla. Yûsaku Matsuda was a mystery outside of Japan which is a cultural crime. The good thing is that over the last few years, Matsuda’s finest performances have finally been released in America on Blu-ray. This includes The Game Trilogy (The Most Dangerous Game, The Killing Game & The Execution Game) and Yokahama BJ Blues. Now we get to see Yûsaku Matsuda most controversial film The Beast To Die.
On a rainy night, Kunihiko Date (Yûsaku Matsuda) attacks a police officer and steals his gun. He proceeds to show up at a mobster run casino that’s closing for the night and kills a few people. He’s not done. He checks out the security of a bank for a future crime. You’d imagine Kunihiko was a Yakuza member gone rogue. Turns out he’s a respected combat photographer who has been capturing images in warzones around the world. He likes to listen to classical music in his apartment and even enjoy live performance. But there is something completely messed up about him. He doesn’t appear to have an ounce of guilt when he murders. After acting as a lone wolf for a while, he recruits a waiter that he feels has the same mindset. He trains the waiter to shoot and slowly explains his mindset that has made him able to pull the trigger when looking at his victims. The duo proceed to commit some rather heinous killings before they have to split the city with a police detective on their trail.
This is a bold film because Yûsaku Matsuda fully immerses himself into the role of the bad guy. We aren’t given any real outs for feeling he isn’t a cold blooded killer. We get an understanding that his behavior has come from being exposed to capturing atrocities in battlefields. But he has no desire to fix what’s wrong inside of himself. He wants to push his urges to the extreme. Director Tōru Murakawa does an amazing job showing the sociopathic ways of Kunihiko. He picks distant shots for many of the action scenes so we don’t identify too closely with him during his killing sprees. This is a cinematic masterpiece in the framing a homicidal sociopath. If The Beast To Die had played in America before Black Rain was released, we’d all sense that bad things are about to happen when Yûsaku Matsuda appeared on screen.
The Video is 1.85:1 anamorphic. The color is sharp in the transfer. The Audio is LPCM 2.0 Stereo in Japanese. The levels are great for both the classical music and the shoot outs. The movie is subtitled in English.
Toru Murakawa (20:25) has the director talk about how he and Yûsaku Matsuda knew this would be their last film together. The duo made a pact to not interfere with each other’s ideas for the movie. Murakawa views this as the most important film in his career. He talks about the novel and the Toho adaptation from 1959. He took the material in a different way. He talks about his time with Matsuda.
Shoichi Marruyama (22:49) has the screenwriter reflect on the adaptation and his other work with Yûsaku Matsuda. His first produced feature script was The Execution Game. He also wrote for the Matsuda’s Detective TV series. He views the novel for The Beast To Die as rather horrifying and impressive. He sees the “hero” as overwhelmingly evil. He was given a bit of freedom in the adaptation. The only driving force was to make it exciting and take it in places the audience wouldn’t believe.
Jordan Harper (12:29) has the screenwriter give an appreciation of the film. He feels that The Beast To Die is Noir. He gets into the various film performances of Yûsaku Matsuda in cinema.
Limited Edition Illustrated Booklet with an essay by Tom Mes about Yûsaku Matsuda being the Lost Rebel. He goes into how the actor still has an impact in Japan.
Radiance Films present The Beast To Die: Limited Edition. Directed by Tôru Murakawa. Screenplay by Shoichi Maruyama. Starring Yûsaku Matsuda, Mako Midori, Akemi Mari, Toshio Kurosawa, Hôsei Komatsu, Kunio Murai, Kazuo Katô, Yoshi Katô & Asami Kobayashi. Running Time: 119 minutes. Rating: Unrated. Release Date: July 22, 2025.
