Giri/Haji Review

Translating to Duty/Shame and set in both Tokyo and London, Giri/Haji is a thriller about a Tokyo detective named Kenzo Mori, scouring the London underworld to find his allegedly deceased brother, Yuto. Yuto was accused of brutally murdering the nephew of a yakuza member, which could lead to the onset of a gang war. Kenzo’s investigation into the disappearance lures him into dangerous elements of the corrupt underworld of London’s criminal circuit.

What Is A Common Occurrence Now More Than Ever?

Let’s say you are sitting down on your couch to watch TV — a common occurrence, now more than ever! — and are having trouble deciding what, exactly, you’re looking for in regards to an evening’s entertainment. You’re thinking you’d like something with action, maybe some tough-guy posturing and a bit of stoic bloodshedding. A pulpy crime flick.

Actually, scratch that, how about a Law and Order-type of thing? Not just one of them — all of them, in a single fell swoop. Airing in the U.K. in late 2019 and slinking on to Netflix at the end of this past January, Giri/Haji is, to put it mildly, a one-stop-shopping array of genres.

At its core, the show revolves around two brothers — Kenzo (Takehiro Hira), a dedicated police detective, and Yuto (Yôsuke Kubozuka), an enforcer for a Tokyo yakuza family — and uses a standard Cain-and-Abel storyline as its starting point. The fact that writer/creator Joe Barton somehow melds all of it together in a manner that not only feels cohesive but close to completely natural feels miraculous. Robert Viglasky/Netflix “Someone threw a stone in a pond a long ways away,” one character tells another early on, “and we’re only just feeling the ripples.”

The official story is that he’s attending a seminar on “crime-scene management” given by a detective named Sarah Weitzmann (Kelly Macdonald). But Giri/Haji has a habit of introducing new characters and new avenues to travel down, and often feels compelled to give those detours the deep-dive treatment as well. We start to find out more about Weitzmann’s past, for example, and why she often gets the side-eye at work.

Every character adds something to the big picture by the end. But Barton & co. have thrown a stone from across the pond, and there is no better time then now to feel the ripples of this series. Giri/Haji, by the way, translates to “Duty/Shame,” the two factors that everyone in the series have in common.

Where Is This Thriller Set?

Soulful thriller set in Tokyo and London, exploring the butterfly effect of a single murder across two cities. A dark, witty and daring examination of morality and redemption.

Who Is Detective Kenzo Mori?

Detective Kenzo Mori (Takehiro Hira) is keeping an eye on the uneasy peace between violent Japanese gangster families in Tokyo. His own little brother Yuto (Yosuke This is an unusual detective series set in London and Tokyo with more than half of the dialogue in Japanese with subtitles. Detective Kenzo Mori (Takehiro Hira) is keeping an eye on the uneasy peace between violent Japanese gangster families in Tokyo.

In London Kenzo enlists the help of Rodney (Will Sharpe), a half-Japanese, drug-addicted rent boy (male prostitute) who has connections to the underworld that Kenzo needs to infiltrate to find his brother. Besides showing some graphic depictions of Rodney at work, the plot gets more exceptional when Kenzo’s headstrong teenage daughter, Taki (Aoi Okuyama), joins her father in London and befriends Rodney. Kenzo even permits Taki to stay overnight in Rodney’s flat, a tiny room with one bed (Rodney sleeps on the floor) and a bathroom down the hall, which is an unsafe environment.

The producers were planning a second series focusing on Taki and Rodney, which unfortunately never materialized. Although the series was popular in Britain and was even nominated for several BAFTA awards, I wonder if the American reception to the violence and the highly sexualized elements of the story, not to mention extensive subtitles for a language no one understands, might have been what helped to convince Netflix/BBC to pull the plug. At the end, Kelly Macdonald in her role of detective Sarah Weitzman, Kenzo’s British/Jewish lover, is trying to get a commitment from Kenzo in a coffee shop with Taki standing nearby.

FIN. … Expand