“The film’s overall lively tone veers only a little from the irreverence you’d expect after repeatedly hearing John Phillip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever” (part of a wonderfully playful score) in a film where everything American comes with negative connotations. Instead of seeming inconsistent, those forays between the harsh realities of postwar occupation and Kinta’s wild interactions with the yakuza and the hogs breathe life into the film that established Imamura’s unique place in the film world.” (Pigs and Battleships)

“Forever transforming intricate layers of sleaze into something profound, Shohei Imamura continued on the same path he’d journeyed in 1963’s The Insect Woman with its follow-up, Intentions of Murder. The 1964 film approaches many of Imamura’s favorite subjects, notably an unremarkable and unhappy woman dragged through conflict and emerging with complicated victory” (Intentions of Murder)

“By giving his audience this insightful experiment, Imamura blends truth with fiction and the perception of reality with the realization that everything we’ve seen is staged, to varying extents.  It’s a brilliant and thought-provoking look at film as a medium unable to show unfiltered truth.” (A Man Vanishes)

“Part of what makes Vengeance Is Mine so compelling and unsettling is the almost total lack of distinction to be found in the Enokizu character.  We see barely anything that makes him different or more monstrous, aside from the actual crimes, than any guy walking down the street at any time.” (Vengeance Is Mine)