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A double suicide in somber black-and-white yields to blazing jukebox sound and fury—hushed Japanese tradition meets raucous modernity via a visual slap worthy of Nicholas Ray. The crime of passion is a plain crime, detective and call girl in a frame-up, the widow (Misako Watanabe) is so suspiciously placid that she runs a knitting school. The underworld is a business divided, a mysterious torpedo (Jo Shishido) wedges himself between warring clans with a forceful style. (Facing an uncooperative dandy, he speeds up the shakedown by improvising a blowtorch out of hairspray can and lighter.) One boss (Akiji Kobayashi) runs a posh office and has a brother (Tamio Kawaji) who's rather sensitive about their mother's prostitute stint during the war, his rival (Shin Kinzo) operates out of a Nikkatsu theater full of flickering screens. "To kill the killers," a blunt goal with every last inch of honor meticulously scraped off. If Seijun Suzuki stages a scene in a nightclub, it must be inside a soundproof chamber equipped with one-way mirrors so that a Yakuza beating can take place while the lights dim and a burlesque queen fan-dances in the background. The Yojimbo angle has been noted, Fuller's lessons (House of Bamboo, Underworld U.S.A.) are visible. Hallucinatory color marks the concentric cycles of betrayal: Pink smoke flows out of dynamite, an interrogation room's rotten yellows segue into billowing clouds of golden dust, the welts on the back of a mistress are rhymed with the crimson carpet on which she writhes. The hero's puffy mug is pushed against the camera lens itself, dangling model bombardiers anticipate La Chinoise. "Want your face to look like a Venetian blind?" Fukasaku and Miike take it from there. With Minako Katsuki, Daisaburo Hirata, Eiji Go, and Koichi Uenoyama.
--- Fernando F. Croce |