Black marketeer Ueda (Hiroki Matsukata) gets revenge on those who stole a pound of his morphine, but gets arrested and charged with murder. Looking at twenty years in prison, he keeps escaping, over and over again, just like the true story this was based on, as that man ran seven times.

I’m struck by the fact that we know the protagonist of director Sadao Nakajima is a bad person, yet prison and confinement are horrible for everyone and should build empathy within us — or at least, that’s the intention. The first of a jailhouse trilogy of films, along with Shimane Prison Riot and The Man Who Shot the Don, this is a tough movie about rough men, including one who wants to be free, no matter what it takes.

The Radiance Films Blu-ray — the first Western release of this movie — has extras including commentary by yakuza film expert Nathan Stuart, a visual essay on Sadao Nakajima by Tom Mes, a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Filippo Di Battista and a limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Earl Jackson and an archival review of the film. It’s a limited edition of 3,000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with a removable OBI strip, leaving the packaging free of certificates and markings. You can get it from MVD.