2013 Cannes Film Festival Predictions: Takashi Miike’s Straw Shield

#78. Takashi Miike’s Straw Shield

Gist: Based on a novel by Kiuchi Kazuhiro, Straw Shield will follow Fujiwara, a ‘child killer,’ who’s been captured and now must be taken across the country to stand trial, escorted by a pair of police officers played by popular television actors Osawa Takao and Matsushima Nanako. Problems arise when we learn that his victim’s grandfather is wealthy and unsatisfied with the prospect of conventional justice, and is offering a twelve million dollar bounty to anyone who can kill the killer en route to his prison cell.

Prediction: Cannes like Miike, and lately had tried to find room for him wherever they can fit him. His underrated 2011 Comp berth, Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai, impressed few and won zip, so we’ll be surprised to see him return there any time soon, especially since most of his work is so precisely attuned to the demands of their Midnight Screening section.