This isn’t just a film; it’s a quiet howl into the abyss. Shinji Aoyama’s Helpless is a hypnotic fever dream, stripped bare of sentimentality and drenched in post-industrial gloom. Imagine a gangster film with its guts ripped out, where the violence isn’t cathartic but inevitable, like gravity pulling everyone into the void.
Yasuo (played with eerie restraint by Tadanobu Asano) is no ordinary ex-con. He’s a smoldering ruin, barely tethered to the world, driven by revenge against a boss who may or may not have betrayed him. But this isn’t a straightforward quest for justice—it’s more like watching a man walk into quicksand, too proud or broken to care. Before diving into the dark underworld, Yasuo hands off his fragile, mentally challenged sister Yuri to Kenji, a well-meaning yet hapless pawn in this grim tale. Oh, and there’s the mysterious black bag—a symbol, perhaps, of everything corrupt and irredeemable in Yasuo’s orbit.
Aoyama’s direction is sparse yet oppressive, with long, lingering takes courtesy of Masaki Tamura’s bleak cinematography. The camera doesn’t flinch, forcing you to sit in the suffocating tension as characters unravel against an unforgiving urban backdrop. The soundtrack—composed by Aoyama himself and Isao Yamada—is an eerie undercurrent, more like a dirge than a score, amplifying the film’s haunting nihilism.
This is no flashy Yakuza flick with slick action and moral redemption. Instead, Helpless is a meditation on isolation, betrayal, and the inescapable pull of one’s own destruction. Every frame feels like a ghost story—except the ghosts are still alive, and they don’t know it yet.
It’s a slow burn, sure, but the embers stick with you long after the credits roll. Watch it if you dare, but don’t expect to come out unscathed. Helpless doesn’t just show you darkness; it drags you into it.
