For some reason this last month I went on a Japanese Yakuza movie kick. Yakuza are Japanese gangsters. “Why did you suddenly decide to watch a bunch of Japanese movies?” you ask. I have no idea why. I really don’t. Like most Americans, the only Japanese movies I was even remotely familiar with were
Godzilla movies. Oh yeah, I did watch
The Seven Samurai a couple years ago. In fact, like most Americans, my familiarity with foreign films is pretty slim. I already had a couple in my Netflix queue, so I advanced them and added a few more. Here’s my reviews of the 6 movies I watched. These reviews are from someone completely unfamiliar with the genre, Japanese culture, and Yakuza traditions. It was fun and educational.
A Colt is My Passport (Takashi Nomura, 1967) What a great name for a movie, but it’s a bit misleading. My favorite of this bunch.
A Colt is My Passport is very heavily influenced by both Spaghetti Westerns and
film noir. An odd combo perhaps, but it works. A hit man (Jô Shishido) is hired by a Yakuza gang, but is double-crossed by his employers for getting the boss involved. He and his driver are targeted so they try to hide out from both gangs in a fleabag hotel where they meet a girl. She wants to get away from her life also. The gangs find where he’s gone. Trouble ensues. The ending is very much from a Western, a showdown out on a dusty plain. The beauty of this film is the Spaghetti Western soundtrack (it really works!) and the black and white cinematography. 84 minutes long.
Youth of the Beast (Seijun Suzuki 1963) – Not sure what the name of this one means. A former cop (Jô Shishido again) who just got out of prison beats his way into the mob to find who killed a friend. He is one tough fellow. First he goes into a mob-owned restaurant and runs up a huge tab, then says “I don’t have any money.” They take him into the office and he beats up one of their guys and takes his gun. Of course, if a guy has that much chutzpa, they take him in. Eventually the other gang offers to let him join them as well. He agrees to work as a double agent, so to speak, and works both against each other to get his information and destroy the gangs. In color at 92 minutes.
Stray Dog (Akira Kurosawa 1949) –
Stray Dog is not really a Yakuza film, it’s more of a police procedural. A rookie homicide detective (Toshirô Mifune) loses his gun and works with another detective (Takashi Shimura) to find it. Along the way he sees crimes done with his gun and is torn up about it. He makes some smart moves for a rookie, and some dumb moves but he is single-minded and focused. He also is bothered by the fact that the criminal is so much like him. A few different decisions and they could change places, he the criminal and the criminal a cop.
Stray Dogs has the most drama, or I should say melodrama. I don’t say that as a negative, just trying to be accurate. A solid film from the master Japanese director Kurosawa (
The Seven Samurai). Black and white at 122 minutes.
Pale Flower (Masahiro Shinoda 1964) – The name isn’t much to go by and doesn’t sound as cool as
A Colt is My Passport or
Tokyo Drifter. However, the movie is straight-up
film noir: Nihilistic and dark. A Yakuza (Ryô Ikebe) gets out of jail after serving three years for murder of a rival gang member. Now the two gangs work together so he’s in a sort of limbo. He goes to gambling dens because it’s the only way he can feel anything. He meets a girl (Mariko Kaga) who’s just as lost as he is. She’s not interested in romance, she just wants to feel life. She’s one of those bored rich people. There’s a lot of gambling in this movie. There’s also a surprising (to me) scene in a bowling alley (see essays on bowling and
film noir http://wesclark.com/ubn/bowling_noir.html and
http://web.archive.org/web/20050205084815/http://members.aol.com/bobbuttman/bowlingnoir/bowlingnoir.htm).
Pale Flower is the darkest of these films, but it’s not violent. Also black and white at 96 minutes.
Tokyo Drifter (Seijun Suzuki 1966) – Another cool name and accurately describes the movie. A Yakuza guy named Testu stays loyal to his boss even though his boss is going straight. However, another gang wants one of the boss’s buildings and deals with him the Yakuza way. In order to keep the peace, Tetsu has to wander. But he gets hunted anyway. This one is the most action-packed of the bunch. However I had a bit of trouble following it early on. Part of the problem is each gang has a guy called Tetsu (Tetsuya Watari and Tamio Kawaji). Of all these films this one has the most B-movie feel with choppy editing and close-ups. However the set design, while minimal, is inventive and well used, even expressionistic and post-modern. The music sounds like 1950s crime jazz with a bit of Western thrown in. There’s an extended bar fight in a bar called Western Noon. There’s some Americans drinking in there and during the bar fight, they get the worst of it and are used as comic relief which was quite interesting. Actually, kind of a nice turnabout on the frequently-used Asian comic-relief in American films. Color at 82 minutes.
The Yakuza (Sydney Pollack 1974) Technically isn’t a Japanese Yakuza movie. What a great film! Four guys served in the occupation Army in Japan right after WWII. This movie takes place twenty years after. George Tanner (Brian Keith), gets himself in a jam with a Yakuza gang. He asks Harry Kilmer (Robert Mitchum) to help him out because Harry has a bond with a Yakuza member named Tanaka Ken (Takakura Ken). Ken hates Kilmer, but owes him a
giri, an obligation, a burden or debt. Ken has retired from the Yakuza and to get involved again means a death sentence. Kilmer finds this out too late and the movie is spent trying to decide what is right and what is honorable and how to keep Ken from being killed. Sydney Pollack was a pretty solid director with some major films (see his IMDB page). Screenwriters today should watch this movie and learn some lessons about subtext (i.e. saying lots without saying much). The screenwriters are Paul Shrader (
Taxi Driver) and Robert Towne (
Chinatown). This movie is highly recommended, even though it isn’t a real Yakuza film. I will defiantly be watching it again. Color at 112 minutes.
Overall I was very impressed with the direction, cinematography, and acting in all of these. I recommend any of them and will probably watch more in the future. Another Yakuza film with a great name that I’ll get around to is
Branded to Kill
. All are availble through Netflix and but Pale Flower is the only one on Instant right now. If you have any suggestions on Yakuza films or even foreign films in general, feel free to leave a comment.
Filed under: C,Movies,P,Reviews,S,T,Y | 1940s, 1960s, 1970s, Crime Films, Film Noir, Japanese, Japanese Film, Robert Mitchum, Sydney Pollack, Yakuza|No Comments
This is the first of a series of movies where Dean Martins plays super-spy Matt Helm. This is also the only one of the series that
Netflix
has. Amazon has them all as a set (see below). Similar to
Our Man Flint and
In Like Flint with James Coburn. The waste of film called
Austin Powers obviously got many things from
The Silencers.
Austin Powers is barely amusing when it is supposed to be funny.
The Silencers is amusing, and occasionally funny, when it is supposed to be just amusing. At least the real 1960s spy movies were cool.
The movie begins with Matt Helm retired from spying to lead a hedonistic life of luxury. After spending several minutes on the gadgets (and woman) in his swinging pad, he is reluctantly motivated back into service. There are several of those scenes that are very sexy, without showing anything, that Hollywood is unable to do anymore. He also beds more women than James Bond. The story seems to be this: He is to intercept something and stop a guy from killing a bunch of people. They did have some explosions near the end.
If you like the swinging 60s and Dean Martin, you’ll probably like this movie. If you like a plot and story, you’ll be disappointed. After watching for about an hour I had to wonder if this movie was only about women or if there was going to be a story. The camera spends a lot of time on them instead of the star. I know I seem down on the lack of story, but The Silencers is just so cool I would watch it again.
Filed under: Movies,Reviews,S | 1960s, Cheesecake, Dean Martin, Rat Pack, Spoofs, Spy Films|1 Comment
Ball of Fire. Directed by Howard Hawks, Screenplay by Charles Brackett & Billy Wilder story by Billy Wilder & Thomas Monroe. Starring Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Dana Andrews. 1941. 111 minutes.
A Song is Born. Also directed by Howard Hawks. Starring Danny Kaye, Virginia Mayo, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Louis Armstrong, Lionel Hampton, Charlie Barnet, Mel Powell. 1948. 113 minutes.
A sexy Barbara Stanwyck and a bunch of old men. What do you think happens? OK, Gary Cooper isn’t old, but in this movie he might as well be. Except, he looks like Gary Cooper. The casting is excellent except for Gary Cooper. Somehow he seems miscast as the guy who was reading at two years old. He does a good job, but I’m not convinced as I watch. Barbara Stanwyck is great as the “girl from 3rd Ave.” Billy Wilder co-wrote, I wonder why he didn’t’ direct? As you can imagine, anything written by Wilder is going to be fun to listen to. If you are a person who loves fast-talking dames and gangsters, this is the movie for you. Linguists probably love Ball of Fire the way librarians and computer geeks love Desk Set.
Ball Of Fire legs
Gary Copper is Professor Bertram Potts, the leader of eight professors spending a decade or more living together while writing an encyclopedia. One day the trashman, hoping to win a contest, asks the professors a question using a lot of slang. The words he uses cause Prof. Potts to realize his 23-page article on slang is way out-of-date. (And really, when was slang more colorful than the 1930s and 1940s?) So he sets out to find people to help him learn new slang terms. One of the helpers is Sugarpuss O’Shea (Barbara Stanwyck), a dancer and gangster’s moll that needs to hide out. She moves into the bachelor house and stirs the dust.
The supporting cast is great, as in many of these old movies. Henry Travers (the angel from It’s A Wonderful Life), S. Z. Sakall (From Casablanca), and others.
Jazz Greats Playing Together
This movie was remade in 1948 as A Song is Born starring Danny Kaye in the Copper role and Virginia Mayo in the Stanwyck role. The big difference in Song is that the professors are writing a music encyclopedia and discover Jazz. Benny Goodman stars as one of the professors and Louis Armstrong is in it as well. There are a couple of great scenes of several jazz greats playing together. We should be thankful for these scenes. Originally they were to be songs for Danny Kaye, but the songwriter (Kaye’s wife!) wanted double her normal amount. So Samuel Goldwyn decided to just let the musicians play popular jazz. The direction isn’t as sharp, and the supporting actors, while recognizable, lack the charms of the original. However, Kaye brings a more comic reading of the role and it is worth a viewing just to see all those classic jazz players together.
Filed under: B,Movies,Reviews,S | 1940s, Howard Hawks, Jazz, Screwball Comedy|1 Comment
