Based on an actual killing, the film begins like a documentary with a solemn voice-over. But this evolves into a grotesque, dream-like fable permeated with black humor. A Korean man convicted of rape and murder miraculously survives the hangman's rope. When officials find that the condemned man has amnesia, they try by every means to revive his memory before attempting a second execution. The guards go as far as re-enacting his childhood and crime inside the prison. As this bizarre tale unfolds, Oshima blurs the boundary between imagination and reality, turning Death into a brilliant surrealist work.

This sad tale, based on a true story of a Japanese-born Korean student who raped and killed two girls in 1958 and was then hanged in 1963 when he reached maturity, is turned by director Nagisa Oshima into a black farce reminiscent of the darkly satirical, anti-authoritarian films of Luis Bu�uel. The film opens with the hanging of the criminal, but the noose fails to kill him. Instead he gets amnesia, and the executioners and officials reenact the crime, hoping to jog his memory and prove that he is guilty. Soon they begin to identify with their roles, and the line blurs between the crime and its reenactment. The film ends as a bitter indictment of Japanese nationalism, capital punishment, and Japanese institutional prejudice against Koreans. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide