hazardes

i bought a box set of three films directed by Takeshi Kitano (aka “Beat” Takeshi) “Violent Cop”, “Boiling Point” and “Sonatine“

Kitano is very famous in Japan. for most of the 1980s he was known as a stand-up comedian and tv host before moving into film directing and acting. in 1989 he was set to star in “Violent Cop” with Kinji Fukasaku directing, however the scheduling didn't work out due to Kitano's tv commitments and Fukasaku dropped out of the project, leaving the film without a director. someone suggested to Kitano that he direct the film himself and that's what ended up happening

i watched Violent Cop last weekend expecting great things, and it certainly is a film about a violent cop. Kitano stars as Azuma, a police detective with a habit of using excessive force when dealing with criminals. Azuma is assigned to investigate the murder of a drug dealer and the film follows the investigation, and Azuma's life when he is off the clock. the plot is a fairly standard crime film along the lines of something like Dirty Harry but what makes it interesting is Kitano's direction. i mentioned Kinji Fukasaku was set to direct, and if you have read my earlier posts you'll know what i think of his yakuza movies like Battles Without Honour and Humanity, there is so much energy in them, particularly the action sequences, with the camera violently shaking all over the place. you can practically feel the energy crackling through the screen like a jolt of electricity

well, with Violent Cop it's like Kitano decided to do the exact opposite of what Fukasaku would've done. the camera hardly moves, and i don't even know if you could call the performances acting. there is virtually no emotion at all in the entire film, the actors deliver their lines in long drawn out scenes with no camera movement, long pauses, and sudden outbursts of extreme violence. it gives the film a very nihilistic tone, but it feels completely lifeless and when it finished i just kinda sat there feeling nothing at all about what i had just seen

i can kinda see what he was going for but it just didn't work for me. i didn't care about anything that happened. there's even a pretty nasty rape scene involving Azuma's disabled sister but it's filmed in such an emotionless dispassionate way that i sat staring blankly at the tv

weird as fuck

Boiling Point is Kitano's second film, about a hapless duo of lowlifes who work at a petrol station. their boss is beaten up by a local yakuza and they go on a trip to Okinawa in order to buy a gun and get revenge

filmed in exactly the same style as Violent Cop with all the same problems, lack of emotion, and nihilistic style. i enjoyed it a little more as the characters are more fleshed out and interesting, and there are a few moments of black humour

Sonatine is the final film in the set, and Kitano's fourth as director (his third, A Scene at the Sea is not included here) the plot follows a yakuza gang led by Kitano who are sent to Okinawa by their boss to help resolve a gang war

the plot reminds me of Fukasaku's yakuza movies, and is full of the same allegiances, betrayals, and violent revenge that characterised them, and it's definitely the most interesting film of the three. but again i just found it dispassionate, emotionless, and nihilistic due to the way it was shot

here's an example of an “action” scene from the film, to give you an idea of what i mean

Sonatine bar shootout

contrast it with this from Fukasaku

Battles Without Honor And Humanity Shuji Yano death scene

so yeah, Takeshi Kitano. definitely a unique director, but his style just doesn't work for me. like the characters in his films i just sit there expressionless while events unfold on the screen in front of me, feeling nothing. and when it's over i slowly walk over to my tv, take the disc out of my player, and put it back on the shelf

today was a public holiday here in the UK and i had the day off work. it's the end of the month and i have no money left so the plan for today was to sit around at home, do a couple of chores around the house, have some dinner, and then watch a load of films

mission accomplished!

i ended up marathoning the last three films in the Battles Without Honour and Humanity series, which will come as a shock to you i'm sure. i said writing this blog would give me an excuse to watch them all again. i honestly don't think i've ever been as into a series of films as i am these, like i mentioned in an earlier post they're just so dense, and i really feel like i'm learning lots of things while watching them; language, history, culture, all of it very alien to someone who grew up half a world away

the third and fourth films; Proxy War and Police Tactics are the two films in the series that are the most closely linked together, Police Tactics follows directly on from the events in Proxy War, and tells how an all-out gang war erupted in Hiroshima between rival yakuza factions in 1963, and the subsequent crackdown from the authorities. the plot gets very heavy in these two, when i talked about the first film i mentioned that it can be hard to follow in places, and that is magnified here as there is so much going on, it all follows the familiar pattern of alliances, betrayals, and violent revenge, but i did find it a lot easier to keep track of who everyone was the second time round

it's funny, you'll spot an actor and be like “oh i recognise him he's so and so from the first film” but then you remember that the character he played two films ago was brutally murdered and that same actor is playing someone completely different now. this happens quite a lot

one actor i have to mention is the amazing Nobuo Kaneko who plays Boss Yamamori in all five films. i came to absolutely love him by the end, Yamamori is a slimy double-crossing cowardly snake, and Kaneko delivers such a memorable performance. he appears in loads of other Japanese films i've watched recently from around this time too, always playing similar characters – scheming bosses, corrupt politicians, he was definitely typecast, and he's great in them all. i looked him up on Wikipedia and he had a really long career, even hosting a popular cookery show on Japanese TV towards the end of his life. such a character

the fourth film Police Tactics was originally planned to be the final film in the series, and it's written that way, however it was such a success that Toei put up the money and got Fukasaku to direct one more. i'm glad they did because Final Episode is an absolute banger movie and a great send off for the series. set a few years after the events of Police Tactics, the public have turned against the yakuza and their constant violence forcing the gangs to try and rebrand as respectable businesses and a “political organisation” called Tensei. predictably this doesn't go well and infighting soon leads to more violence

you really get a sense of how tired of it all Shozo Hirono (Bunta Sugawara) is by the end, when he realises that he's become the boss sending the young footsoldiers out to die

so, which one of the five films is the best? i can't decide, please don't put a gun to my head and force me to choose, all five of them are simultaneously the best film i've ever seen, but Proxy War is probably my favourite

still can't believe i got the box set for twenty-five quid

the hardest thing about writing this post was coming up with a title

rather than dedicate a whole blog post to one film, i thought i'd try writing about all the films i watched this week, in a sort of anthology post, let's see!

two films from Kinji Fukasaku, and one from Teruo Ishii. i'm new to Ishii, Blind Woman's Curse (1970) is the first film of his i've seen, and i enjoyed it a lot. a young Meiko Kaji in her first starring role as the dragon-tattooed oyabun of a yakuza clan, facing off against a rival gang in a surreal mix of traditional period ninkyo eiga yakuza movie and weird grotesque ghost story. this is par for the course for Ishii apparently, some of the titles of his other films are definitely interesting! Horrors of Malformed Men sounds wonderful. Blind Woman's Curse is quite bloody in places, with lots of red paint spraying everywhere in that style common to the early '70s (Lady Snowblood is great for that) i really liked how Kaji's gang all had matching back tattoos that lined up when they stood in formation, with Kaji at one end with the head of the dragon on her back. she is such a badass

it's easy to see why Meiko Kaji went on to become a star. she just has this aura about her, that mesmerising quality that makes it hard to focus on anything else when she's on screen. if i was 20 years older i definitely would've had a poster of her on my teenage bedroom wall (tbf i'd put one up now if i could find one)

Hiroshima Death Match (dir. Kinji Fukasaku, 1973) is the second film in the Battles Without Honour and Humanity series, and is a slight departure from the first in that it mainly focuses on one character, the tragic yakuza hitman Shoji Yamanaka (played by Kinya Kitaoji) also starring Meiko Kaji (notice a pattern here) and Shinichi “Sonny” Chiba who gives an incredible performance as the psychopathic Katsutoshi Otomo. stylistically it's exactly the same as the first, which is hardly surprising as they were filmed back to back (the entire five film series was released in the space of two years) and features the same frantic fight scenes and documentary style that leaves you breathless. you remember how i said that i didn't know which of the five films was my favourite? well it might be this one, mainly because of Kaji and Chiba as they are both excellent

based on true events, with only the time period changed slightly so it would continue from the events of the first film rather than being set concurrently (plus production happened so quickly they couldn't rebuild one of the sets in time) Bunta Sugawara takes a back seat in this one. the real life Yamanaka was still held in great reverence by the yakuza of Hiroshima so screenwriter Kazuo Kasahara had to be careful and not change his story too much

i really love this series, there's so much density to it, so much to read about and learn, and it's a tragedy that it took so long to get the recognition it deserves outside of Japan

finally, this week i also watched another Fukasaku movie, Wolves, Pigs, and Men (1964) which has recently been released on blu-ray by Eureka. shot in black and white, this is a brilliant tale of the fallout of a heist gone wrong, starring one of the golden boys of Japanese cinema of the time period, Ken Takakura, playing a character called Jiro, who is an absolute bastard. quite a hard watch in places, this film is packed with social commentary about the downtrodden people forced to live out their lives in the slums of Tokyo, and their efforts to escape to a better life. one film that i am pretty sure was influenced by this masterpiece is Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs as they are quite similar in places (including some nasty torture sequences)

one word i would use to describe this film is “bleak” as there are no happy endings here, when a heist goes wrong things quickly devolve into paranoia and infighting, and when the yakuza get involved, well...

Fukasaku is quickly becoming one of my favourite film makers, everything i've seen of his so far has been fantastic, and each time they announce a new release of one of his movies it jumps right to the top of my must watch list. Arrow have one coming up, “The Threat” which is another one of his black and white earlier films, and i am looking forward to it immensely

excuse me while i gush about one of my favourite films for a few minutes

a few months ago i popped into my local HMV one lunchtime to have a browse, they were having a sale in their blu-ray section and i picked up an interesting looking box set from Arrow Video, three films by a Japanese director called Kinji Fukasaku that i vaguely recognised (had i seen one of his films before? i thought i had)

i'll probably talk about this particular box set in another post, but after watching the films inside i fell down a lengthy Wikipedia rabbit-hole where i discovered that the director had a vast and diverse career spanning 4 decades, had made over sixty films, and that nearly all of these were unknown outside of Japan. one that was mentioned over and over again was the 5-film Battles Without Honour and Humanity series from the early 1970s, coincidentally also available as a box set from Arrow. i picked this up the next time i was in town for £25. i've always done this, if i see something that i really like i'll try and find out as much as possible about the people who made it, what else have they done? who else did they work with? can you still buy it? are there books? very rarely do i watch something good, and then move straight on to something else. what usually happens next is i'll jump on ebay and try and collect everything i can, which is why my house is full of collections of tat from my various obsessions over the years (Misfits vinyl, 2000AD, “Asia Extreme” DVDs, the Persona videogame series...)

anyway, i digress, back to the Fukasaku films: based on documented events, and with a meticulously researched screenplay by Kazuo Kasahara, the films are adapted from the prison memoirs of a real-life yakuza boss that were published as a series of weekly magazine articles in 1972, and were responsible for creating a whole new genre in Japanese cinema; jitsuroku eiga (“actual record films”)

the first film starts with a bang (literally) with the nuclear explosion over Hiroshima that brought about the end of World War II, and this is precisely what it did to my brain when i watched it. i'm guilty of overusing certain phrases in my writing (you'll probably notice eventually) and “mind-blowing” is one, however in this case it's entirely justified. i ended up watching all 5 films in the space of one long bank holiday weekend

i'd never seen anything like this

set in Hiroshima in the immediate aftermath of the end of the war, the opening half hour or so is an assault on the senses. shot documentary style with grainy footage, newspaper clippings, voice-overs, and with frantic handheld camerawork, it tells how various yakuza gangs formed in the chaos of the open air black markets during US occupation of Japan. the violence is brutal, and because of the way it's been shot with the handheld cameras you feel like you are right there

the remaining hour or so of the film is a gripping tale of honour and betrayal, double-crosses, and brutal revenge. it can be kinda hard to follow the plot in places, as there is a large cast of characters with complicated, shifting allegiances, but i have found this makes the film stand up to repeated viewings (i must've watched it four or five times now)

there are several scenes shot in the street, and in public spaces, including one memorable scene where someone gets stabbed to death at a train station in broad daylight, these were shot “guerilla style” with no permit, and genuine reactions from terrified members of the public who had no idea what was happening. and that ending, damn. Bunta Sugawara's character Shozo Hirono finally decides he's had enough of all the bullshit from the bosses, and sets things up beautifully for the next film Hiroshima Death Match

i have to quickly mention that soundtrack by Toshiaki Tsushima. man, what a banger this song has so much strut and swagger to it, it fits the mood perfectly

i'll talk more about what i find fascinating about the yakuza and their place in postwar Japanese society in another post (strokes chin) but it strikes me even with my very limited knowledge how open they were about being gangsters. becoming a yakuza is seen as a legitimate (if regrettable, so sad) career choice for impoverished young men. this film doesn't gloss over the violence at all, but does show the working class yakuza in a very sympathetic way (one of Fukasaku's earlier films is called Sympathy for the Underdog)

can you imagine seeing this in 1973? this is one of the most exciting pieces of cinematic art i have ever seen, even now in 2024

has Battles Without Honour and Humanity become my favourite film of all time? quite possibly. although it might be one of the other ones, i'll let you know after i've watched them all again, it's definitely one of them though

so i decided to start a blog, and this is my first post. i've never had a blog before, and thinking about it i probably haven't written anything longer than a Mastodon thread since i left high school over 30 years ago, so please bear with me while i find my feet

to be honest i find this whole idea quite intimidating. will my writing be any good? will anyone read this? i figure i should just go for it, and the plan is to at least write something on a regular (weekly?) schedule to begin with, probably at the weekend

i'm going to start by writing about movies. i guess you could say i have unconventional taste in film, my current obsession is old Japanese yakuza movies from the 1960s and 1970s, specifically the films of director Kinji Fukasaku. there are a number of “boutique” blu-ray labels in the UK releasing a near constant supply of interesting films, and all their discs come with comprehensive extras, booklets full of essays, photo galleries. i am very into it

Fukasaku is largely unknown in the west, save from one film: Battle Royale (2000) what's sad about this is he had a 4 decade long directing career, and BR was his final film (he passed away while filming the sequel and it was completed by his son Kenta) for the majority of his career he worked under the Japanese studio system, mainly for TOEI, and to say he was a prolific film maker is a huge understatement, in the 1970s alone he directed twenty-five films

this won't be a chin-stroking blog about the history of cinema or culture, there are way better writers than me out there (some of them have degrees in this stuff!) but i know what i like and i will hopefully be able to at least string some coherent sentences together and maybe even convince you that these films are worth a look, i certainly think so. even if no-one ends up reading this at least i'll have a reason to watch all the films again