Once a leading director of pinku films — Japan's distinctive contribution to the soft-porn genre — Takahisa Zeze has long since expanded into straight indie features, from the whimsical fantasy "Dog Star" (2002) to the revenge drama "Heaven's Story" (2010), with its extreme violence and length (278 minutes). More recently, he has also become a maker of commercial films, including the hit medical melodrama, "The 8-Year Engagement" (2017).
His latest film, "The Promised Land," is more on the "Heaven's Story" side of the spectrum, though it's based on two short stories by best-selling author Shuichi Yoshida and is pitched at the large audience for murder mysteries here.
The film is ambitious to a fault, examining everything from the decline of rural Japan to the traditional ostracism of the socially marginalized, be they Japanese or not.