The Stairway to the Distant Past

Director: Kaizo Hayashi

1995 / 101min / 4K DCP

Maiku Hama returns, now in garish Roy Lichtenstein color, in the luxuriantly melancholy second installment of Hayashi’s noir-inflected trilogy—newly restored for the 30th anniversary—this time facing off against a kingpin known as The Man in White who’s taken full control of the Yokohama waterfront… as well as against his mother, unexpectedly back in his life after having abandoned him years ago. From lost dogs to cartels, no job is too big or small for Masatoshi Nagase’s Hama, haunted by specters from his past, hounded by repossession men, and doing his level best to clean up the mean streets of one endemically corrupt port town.

A Kani Releasing release

Part of After the Case