Keisuke (Hiroyuki Okita) is a good man: Not only is he a high school
teacher who's loved by his students by day, he also runs a business
together with his uncle (Sakae Umezu) on the side, just to financially
support the orphanage he has grown up in. I might want to tell here though
that their business specializes in rape. In case you wonder how rape
can be turned into a business: Those who have been wronged by a woman and
the law is unable to help them turn to Keisuke and his uncle, and
virtually hire Keisuke to rape said woman. But Keisuke doesn't just rape
anybody, he has to have a good (?) and just reason to ... Then a
nightclub owner shows up who claims she has been the mistress of a
politician who's now up for election and that his secretary has stolen the
man away from him and married him. Uncle is moved to tears by her story,
and even though Keisuke has his reservations, he rapes the politician's
wife ... and is photographed doing so. It soon turns out that everything
was a setup by a rival crooked politician to start a smear campaign, and
Keisuke was just the right tool for it. First, Keisuke and uncle suspect a
girl reporter, whom Keisuke almost rapes even, but then they find out that
they work on the same side and she only tries to uncover the crooked
politicians Yakuza ties. Next, Keisuke rapes the truth out of the
nightclub owner, but learns that she is only a small wheel in the crooked
politician's machination and the actual woman behind everything is his
secretary Numata. Our crooked politician wins the election in a
landslide, but Keisuke, uncle and the girl reporter have already set up a
plan to expose him at his election party - and while uncle and the
reporter do everything to expose his Yakuza ties to the press present at
the event, Keisuke sees to it that secretary Numata doesn't interfere - by
raping her. Everything ends happily of course, and in the end, the girl
reporter wants to hire Rapeman herself - the victim: herself! In
pure terms of political correctness of course, this film is unacceptable -
rape is wrong, no matter for what higher good you think you use it. But
having said that, Rapeman, a film that isn't just about
naked women, forced sex, and how many rapes you can stuff into one movie,
has something to it, it's a light-footed crime thriller that never denies
its comicbook roots, that features a likeable cast playing likeable
characters (especially Hiroyuki Okita as mild-mannered teacher by day,
masked rapist by night is great), and that's actually much more
story-driven than sex-driven - all of which doesn't make rape a good
thing, I'm just saying that there's more to the film than rape. And
while my above comments about the film sound quite favourable, I also want
to point out that while the film is rather entertaining, it's not the best
thing one has ever seen by a longshot, nor exceptional genre
entertainment, it's just, well, fun ...
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