Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky 1991

In 2001, after all prisons have been privatized, Ricky Ho—an almost superhuman force of endurance—is sent to a harsh, privatized facility to serve a manslaughter sentence tied to the death of a crime boss who was involved in his girlfriend’s tragedy. The prison is starkly divided into four wings, each ruled by a member of the feared Gang of Four, and Ricky lands squarely in the North wing, where power plays and brutality shape every day behind the concrete walls. The system is brutal, but Ricky’s presence begins to unsettle the delicate balance of control.

From the outset, the North wing becomes a proving ground for Ricky’s resilience. He witnesses a brutal act where an inmate named Samuel disfigures an elderly prisoner, and the tension escalates quickly when Ricky, driven by instinct and fury, blights Samuel’s power by injuring him. In retaliation, Samuel orchestrates a darker plan, enlisting the obese Mad Dragon to take Ricky out, while the disfigured inmate himself teeters on the edge of desperation after his own probation is stalled. The web of threats tightens, and the prison’s danger intensifies as Ricky’s acts ripple through the wing.

A violent shower confrontation soon follows: Mad Dragon launches a brutal assault, and Ricky responds with lethal force, killing both Mad Dragon and Samuel in a pair of crushing, decisive blows that reverberate through the facility. The North wing’s fragility becomes undeniable, and fear of Ricky’s potential to spark a larger uprising spreads through the ranks. To prevent a riot, the one-eyed assistant warden, known as Cyclops, orders the North wing leader—Hai—to stage a public execution of Ricky. The moment spirals beyond control as Hai, overwhelmed by shame after Ricky’s crushing defeat, disembowels himself in a stark, filmed moment of self-inflicted punishment, a macabre display that underscores the fragility of the prison’s power structure and the lengths to which inmates will go to suppress rebellion.

When Hai’s godson is killed by the surrounding inmates after he refuses to seek revenge on Ricky, Ricky burns their opium farm in a bold assertion of control. The Gang’s grip loosens, but Cyclops remains focused on containment, ordering a severe crackdown that traps Ricky as the warden returns from vacation and orders everyone back to their cells. In a calculated move, Cyclops floods Ricky’s cell with cement, freezing him in place and delaying any dramatic escape.

The warden Warden Sugiyama and his spoiled son come back to examine the fallout, and the warden’s interrogation of Ricky is interrupted when Tarzan bursts through a wall in the East wing to confront him. The clash is brutal: Tarzan and Ricky exchange fierce strikes as the hydraulic ceiling begins to descend, threatening to crush them both. Ricky pushes back, fighting to save Tarzan’s life, but Tarzan ultimately sacrifices himself as the ceiling buckles under Ricky’s strength. The warden tries to end the confrontation with a taser, but Tarzan’s bravery buys Ricky enough time to escape as Tarzan dies beneath the machinery.

With Tarzan gone, the warden doubles down on punishment. He orders Ricky buried alive for a full week and promises freedom if Ricky can endure, an ultimatum that tests Ricky’s body and will. He survives, but the warden refuses to grant freedom, leaving Ricky chained within the cell’s dark confines.

Freddy, an inmate, slips Ricky a morsel of food, only to be discovered and killed by Cyclops’s informant Yeh Ming, who taunts Ricky with the corpse. Enraged, Ricky breaks free, exacts revenge by removing Yeh Ming, and blinds Cyclops’s other eye. A full-blown riot erupts as inmates mutilate Cyclops, while the warden disposes of the problem by killing Cyclops in a fit of pique. Ricky then targets the West wing leader, bending limbs until their grip on power is broken, and the South wing leader is slain by the warden when fear drives him to flee.

The story reaches a fever pitch as Ricky, long deprived of his medication, confronts a surprising transformation in the warden: he becomes a hulking, monstrous version of himself. Ricky faces the creature and defeats him in a brutal, visceral struggle, forcing the warden into a meat grinder feet-first and ending the threat once and for all.

With the warden dead, the prison’s chaos continues to rage outside the walls. Ricky steps into the ruined exterior, where guards and inmates still clash. The decisive moment arrives when he presents the warden’s severed head to the crowd, halting the violence in a stark, symbolic gesture. He then delivers a final, decisive blow to the remaining wall, creating a widening gap that offers a path to freedom. Looking out at the new dawn, Ricky declares the prison’s fate—“you’re all free now”—and walks through the opening into the outside world.