“Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects”

Movie Review

In 1989, the American action movie Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects, starring Charles Bronson and J. Lee Thompson, was released. In their long-running and well-known Hollywood partnership, Bronson and director J. Lee Thompson work together for the ninth and final time. The term "kinjite" means "forbidden move" in English, giving away the topic.

In a packed Tokyo train, Hiroshi Hada, a Japanese businessman with a problematic marriage, witnesses a woman being touched inappropriately. She silently groans and has uncontrollable orgasms, but she never cries out or alerts anyone that she is being sexually molested, which fascinates him. After drinking too much at a work party when Hada is relocated to Los Angeles, he tries to replicate what he saw by groping a Caucasian schoolgirl on a packed bus. But the American girl yells, not the Japanese woman Hada saw in Japan. Hada tries to flee but is attacked and robbed by a thief. In the meantime, bystanders beat a number of innocent Asian guys because they think one of them is the man who touched the girl.

Rita Crowe, the young woman, is the daughter of Lt. Crowe (Bronson), a vice-squad investigator with the Los Angeles Police Department who is fiercely protective of her. The legendary "Pimp King" Duke's child prostitution network kidnaps Hada's daughter Fumiko shortly after that. Due to the event involving his daughter, Crowe has grown to despise Japanese people in general and is forced to accept the assignment to find the girl. When he discovers that the Hadas care about their daughter just as passionately as he does for his daughter, his opinions of Japanese people begin to shift.

After some searching, Crowe and his colleague Eddie Rios locate Fumiko and save her from the pimp and his group. They kill one gang member, but the rest manage to flee. Crowe receives a gift-filled visit from the Hadas to express their gratitude for his service. Rita and Hiroshi both know that the other was the one who grabbed her on the bus, but neither of them says anything. Despite this ostensibly pleasant conclusion, Fumiko overdoses on drugs to take her life since her experiences as a prostitute—during which she was raped by Duke and his gang members and sold to clients of both sexes—have left her so traumatized.

Crowe and Rios make the decision to track down Duke, whom they find aboard a boat in a harbor. Duke and his remaining gang members kill Rios in the subsequent fight, although Duke eventually ends up trapped in the harbor. Due to Duke's inability to swim, Crowe has the choice of letting the mobster perish but chooses to drag him out instead. However, Crowe places Duke in a jail wing where sexually aggressive inmates reside as "poetic justice"; as a result, Duke learns that his assigned cellmate is planning to rape him after he makes multiple sexual allusions. Crowe exits in profound delight as Duke yells in agony.

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