Category: yakuza

Gangster films.

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action drama, melodrama gendai-geki yakuza

“Crows Zero”

Crows Zero also known as Kurozu Zero was an original manga series created by Takahashi Hiroshi, and its popularity was credited to the story of a group of students in high school known for violence and mimicking aspects of the Yakuza. The manga was brought to film by Miike Takashi in 2007, which cleverly transferred the hit manga to motion film. The main theme of the story is violence, and it is appraised by many as a clever adaption of social hierarchy and popular gang cultures. As Japan is infamous for their yakuza syndicates, this story entails the contrast between high school gangs and the real time Japanese mafia. Our main character in this story is Genji, played by Oguri Shun. Genji is the son of a powerful yakuza boss who sets out a near impossible goal to become the “ ruler” of an all boys school Suzuran. Serizawa, Tokio and many other unique characters composed the main portion of the two gangs featured in the movie.

Crows Zero has achieved a large fan base purely by creating a fantasy-like world for teenagers and young adults. The main focus of the film was an in depth view of an ambitious high school student with the dream to live up to his father’s success. The story focuses on internal political relations amongst rival gangs which parallels that of actual government. During Genji’s rise to success, he forms alliances as well as creating enemies which created multiple sub stories that went parallel to the main plot. Genji explores the complicated role of being the next ruler of Suzuran as his rival Serizawa defends his title.

The film appeals to a younger clientele, given the fact that the story originates from manga and comic scripts. The portrayal of a cool, dominant gangster lifestyle is always entertaining to get into. Crows Zero targets a particular group of youth that enjoys fantasy-like action films with multiple things happening simultaneously. Our main character, Genji is portrayed as a fearless fighter, capable of defeating many foes at once. As demonstrated during the scene where Genji was attacked at the courtyard, he was able to stand his own against dozens of thugs, eventually winning the loyalty of a boss named Izaki through brute determination. Genji’s surreal ability to endure extensive amounts of physical abuse as well as his ability to deliver punishment made him an appealing character. As a fan of gangster movies, Crows Zero has really captivated the portrayal of bad boys in a personal point of view.

The action scenes were most enjoyable as the camera angles successfully created a dynamic feel. There are many different angles used in the filming which created an interesting combination of scenes that elevated the action. Miike was able to interpret the action scenes of the manga into real-time action scenes, often switching point of views time to time. Miike was also able to achieve the first-person point of view, which puts the viewer close and personal in the fight. There were lots of special effects which created an exaggeration in the power of the punches and the cries of war added an authentic feel of shogun-style warfare. Prior to battle in most scenes, the leaders would unleash a furious cry and then charge. The exaggerated action was definitely on spot, and gave a surreal feel, which oddly as it sounds created a comical and entertaining value, opposed to a grim and gritty feel.

Crows Zero’s success gave birth to a second installment of the series. The movie is highly recommended for viewers that enjoy the yakuza-based genre. The clever camera angles and suspenseful action sequences added to the already popular gangster style film. The movie’s intermittent comical scenes and exaggerated action sequences gave a light and refreshing feel to the film, steering away from the average gangster film. The story includes love, politics and action which gives Crows a definitive advantage in pop culture demands.

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action yakuza

Severed Pinkies and Reconnected Brothers: Takeshi Kitano’s “Brother”

Following the overseas success of Sonatine (1993) and Hanabi (1997), Brother (2000) was director Kitano Takeshi’s first – and last – Hollywood collaboration. Starring himself, Omar Epps (audiences will recognize him as Dr. Foreman from the TV drama House M.D.) and Claude Maki, the film was meant to bring exposure and a wider international audience to Kitano’s films, but its reception was lukewarm at best.

Brother is a yakuza film almost to the point of parody – three pinkie fingers are lost throughout the duration of the film through the yakuza ritual of yubitsume (self-amputation of one’s little finger to atone for offense or disrespect), and there is no shortage of guns, katanas, or full-body tattoos. All the spectacle is there too – the film features a yakuza funeral (with the vigorous bowing of low-ranking members), a yakuza initiation rite, and a yakuza dinner during which one member commits seppuku (the slicing open of the abdomen), causing another to atone for the interruption by having yubitsume forced upon him.

The action scenes are equally unrestrained – lots of people are shot or otherwise murdered in the film. In fact, most of the characters do not survive until the end, and this has the effect of creating a silent intensity that is sustained throughout the film – the gunshots serve to punctuate the quiet segments of the film, but the calm moments themselves are a brooding foreshadowing of looming deaths, which is always just around the corner.

Kitano plays Yamamoto, a high ranking yakuza officer who is forced to flee Japan following the assassination of his boss and the defection of his yakuza “brother” (another equal-ranking officer). He leaves one brother behind for another, flying to Los Angeles to stay with his younger genetic brother Ken (Claude Maki), to whom he has been sending money so that Ken could study abroad. There, he finds that Ken has become a street-level drug pusher that has gotten in trouble with the drug cartel. In helping his brother the only way a Yakuza member knows how – by wiping out the entire drug cartel, Yamamoto begins to establish a criminal empire, eventually coming head-to-head with the Mafia.

Beneath the facade of graphic ultra-violence lie two themes that Kitano explores quite extensively. The first is the eponymous idea of brotherhood – both in the Yakuza and the genetic context. Yakuza is structured as a family, with the head called the oyabun (foster parent), and the members referring to each other as elder and younger brothers (kyoudai). The film draws a parallel and compares these adopted relationships with Yamamoto’s relationship with his only true genetic brother Ken. Both the gang members and Ken refer to Yamamoto with the term “Aniki” (older brother), and it is intentionally not clear what difference (if any) there is between a genetic and adopted brotherly relationship, as Ken becomes Yamamoto’s underling.

The other theme Kitano explores is that of culture and language. The very identities that unite a brotherhood also separates them as “others” – all of the organized crime groups in the film have prominently ethnic backgrounds – the drug dealers are Mexican, the Mafia is Italian, and the Little Tokyo gang are all Japanese. While Yamamoto’s own gang is not quite as ethnically homogenous, it is composed entirely of African-American, Japanese, and Latinos, highlighting an obvious absence of Caucasian members. This forms a pointed commentary on segregation and separation as a source of social conflict. The language barrier also drives the plot – many plot elements hinge on the fact that various groups cannot understand each other, best represented by the sound bite moment when Yamamoto massacres a room of Mexican drug lords then retorts coolly in Japanese, “I understand ‘f*cking Japs’, a**holes”. It was no surprise that that line appeared on the movie’s trailer.

The film does not take itself too seriously – to best enjoy it, it is best if you don’t take it too seriously either. The blood effects have either not aged well, or were a conscious choice by to distance the audience from the brutality (as in his recent film, Zatoichi). The film starts slow, but very quickly ups its tempo into an arpeggio of killing blows. Yet after a while, the deaths blur into each other, the quality lost in the quantity, the meaning lost in the chaos. The acting is also spotty at points, complete with rigid English dialogue that sounds like subtitles being read – ironic for a film in which the language barrier was meant to be a plot device – not its shortcoming.

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extreme gendai-geki thriller yakuza

Thought-Provoking, yet Extremely Confusing, the Japanese Summer: “Double Suicide”

Japanese Summer: Double Suicide/ Night of the Killer (Japanese title: Muri shinju, Nihon no natsu), released in 1967, was directed by Oshima Nagisa and written by three writers, Tamura Takeshi, Sasaki Mamoru and Oshima Nagisa, who wrote Sing a Song of Sex (Nihon shunka ko), another Oshima Nagisa film. The main female actor Sakurai Keiko plays “Nejiko” and the main male actor Sato Kei plays, “Otoko”. This gendai-geki suspense-thriller seems to have had an impact from America’s race riots that were common in the 1960’s, bringing in the themes of sex and violence, life and death, through a series of interaction between the characters.

Nejiko is an 18-year-old girl who openly expresses her desires to have sex with just any man she meets. The opening scenes illustrate her abnormality within society, where she faces rejection from men in a political riot group as well as men in a religious cult group. The story moves when Nejiko picks up Otoko, a suicidal deserter who is looking for his perfect death, on the street. They move the scene to a beach, where Nejiko continues seducing him. Otoko is deeply trapped in his own thoughts about death, showing no interest in her approaches. Then, a group of uniformed yakuza men arrive on the beach to dig up a box full of weapons. Nejiko and Otoko are taken to the yakuza’s secret hideout as captives for witnessing the events. They are put into a room full of killers that include Omocha, a pistol loving old man, and Oni, a madman who finds joy in killing people with knives. Attracted by the violence, the killers have gathered from different parts of Japan in order to join the war of the yakuza. Soon, Shonen the gun-loving kid, TV and Tsukibito, the two men carrying a TV set, join the room filled with bloodthirsty men. Waiting anxiously for the next morning’s war, the characters discover through the TV that a young white Caucasian man is going around the city, randomly shooting and killing people. The men in the room are restless and anxious to kill, while Otoko searches for his perfect death, and Nejiko still continues to seduce the men in the room to sleep with her. The story dramatically changes pace when everyone discovers that they were all left behind by the yakuza and left with no yakuza war to fight in.

In the Japanese Summer: Double Suicide/Night of the Killer, Oshima Nagisa introduces a cultural parallel and connection between America and Japan, reflecting on a key theme of violence. Throughout the film, Shonen refers to the violence in America, especially of the riots occurring with the African-American population. Oshima Nagisa reflects on the social occurrence of the race riots, riots based on racial tension that were popular during the 1960s, showing the natural existence of violence in America. At the same time Oshima illustrates the abundance of violence in the room where they talk about these violent incidents, drawing a similarity between America and Japan. Also, Oshima introduces a young white Caucasian man that shares the thirst for violence. Through the stories on the TV, the Caucasian killer is portrayed to be a psychopath, but by the end of the film, his humane side becomes apparent. The Caucasian cries after receiving bread from Nejiko, helps Otoko carry Omocha after Omocha’s death, and fights alongside Shonen, showing a deeper level of understanding between the two characters. Oshima Nagisa points out violence to be a universal factor, occurring randomly and with universal understanding.

Another connection he created with violence was the corruption of the youth’s minds. In the opening scenes, while Nejiko’s abnormality is illustrated, Oshima introduces the social norms of the youth being the conformed and uniformed young men and women heading towards a political riot. Compared to such norms, Nejiko and Otoko, who appear on the same bridge, are much more free and natural. Furthermore, in the scene where Oni and Omocha are talking, they both recognize and understand Otoko’s passion towards death and Shonen’s passion to kill. The two killers agree that it was also in their youth when they were drawn into the world of killing. While the two killers were awakened at youth, Shonen, Nejiko, Otoko and the Caucasian killer, who are all in the midst of their troubling minds, are young. Oshima creates a definite connection between the youthful mind and corruption, showing such minds to be self-corruptive.

Japanese Summer: Double Suicide/Night of the Killer feels like an abstract representation of the sex and violence in the youth cultures of Japanese society. Despite the fact that the film was referred to as one of the best 10 films by Oshima Nagisa, I find it difficult to recommend to all viewers, especially for its violent content, containing offensive language, sex and nudity. As for the story itself, it was quite confusing what Oshima Nagisa wanted to do with the film. It was as if he wanted to show the corruption and violence in its purist forms, not including any meaningful message or plot to the film.

Categories
action yakuza

Branded to Kill

Branded to Kill, also known as Koroshi no rakuin is truly a masterpiece which propelled the Japanese film society into a new modern era. Branded to Kill was released in 1967 by the Nikkatsu Company. Suzuki Seijun, one of Japan’s most prominent and respected directors, took the newly inspired American style film techniques and turned it into something of his own. The fresh new dynamic camera angles and integrated action shots gave Branded to Kill an edgy new perspective in the yakuza genre of films. The cast is composed of a few main characters including Shishido Joe, Nanbara Koji, Mari Anne and Ogawa Mariko.

Our main character, Hanada Goro, also referred as the number three assassin in Japan gave a comical and animated performance in being a stonecold killer, yet with a unique comical twist. His awkward pleasure in smelling boiled rice gave an original perspective into the twisted life of a contracted killer. We follow our kinky assassin in several missions, of which one consisted of being a transporter. Romance also appeared in the film where Hanada falls in love with an even more mysterious female assassin by the name of Misako. A perfect balance between violence and love gave the film an intricate comparison between full-out violence and the personal life of such dramatic characters.

Some of the most interesting scenes that caught my attention were built around the action. The semi-fantasy feel of an invincible sharp shooter was portrayed with surreal accuracy and the over-exaggeration of the bullet impact. In various scenes, we have Hanada shooting away at foes far away, usually on top of some sort of building. Upon being shot, the character somehow gets entangled on a piece of rope, thus hanging lifeless. There was also usage of the “film within a film” technique where Hanada’s newfound love Misako is held hostage and tortured until her evident death.

Suzuki enjoyed original ideas as Hanada uses unusual ways of killings his targets. In one particular scene, Hanada assassinates his victim by firing his pistol up a water pipe, resulting in planting the bullet into his head. There are also several other clever assassinations that are definitely out of the ordinary.

Suzuki Seijun created such wide variety of visual stunts as well as unrealistic portrayals of death which was interesting to watch. His brilliance was credited to his use of camera angles and a sort of freestyle shooting. He practically used all the types of shots available for this film, and they all came together in brilliant sequences. Although Branded to Kill was a small-budget film, the expertise on such original camerawork made the movie flawless and certainly not cheap. If I was to compare this film to a modern day style, Quentin Tarantino’s twisted and over-exaggerated style suits Suzuki’s animated action scenes. The fluidity of action and the flashbacks and hallucinations are indeed familiar in some of Tarantino’s films. In essence, Suzuki’s genre is most likely directly influencing some of Tarantino’s work such as Kill Bill and Sin City. Branded to Kill is definitely recommended to those who appreciate the genre of gangster films without significant amount of blood and gore. As a fan of violence-based movies, it still satisfies the craving for action, but the unorthodox music and comical aspects soften the realism of the brutal killings. The cleverly composed characters and the general mood of the film achieve comical relief and the occasional suspense from time to time. The film does include various scenes of intense sexual content, as it is part of the Nikkatsu Company films.

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experimental yakuza

Branded to Thrill: Seijun Suzuki’s Branded to Kill

Branded to Kill (Koroshi no rakuin), directed by Suzuki Seijun in 1967 under the Nikkatsu Corporation, is not your typical yakuza film. Meshing the extreme violence of action cinema, the drama of crime cinema, and the creativity of experimental art cinema, Suzuki creates a truly unique film experience worthy of any filmgoer’s respect.

 

The film follows Hanada Goro, a likeable but ruthless rice-sniffing hitman played by Joe Shishido, as he carries out several assassination jobs under his boss Yabuhara Michihiko (Tamagawa Isao). As the film progresses, we see the toll the cutthroat assassin lifestyle takes on Hanada’s mental stability and his relationship with his wife Mami (Mariko Ogawa). The importance of status in Hanada’s world results in his increasingly obsessive desire to move up the ranks as a hitman, becoming the source of his downfall and that of the people close to him.

 

The film begins with Hanada as the “No. 3 killer” who is given a prestigious job by Yabuhara to escort a high-profile client to Nagano. Despite his drunken partner and two ambushes by the fourth- and second-ranked hitmen, Hanada completes his task and kills No. 2 in the process, taking the rank for himself. On his way home, his car breaks down, and he meets a troubled, beautiful young girl named Misako (Mari Anne) who drives him home. Hanada later accepts Misako’s request to kill someone for her but fails in the process. Now on the run from Yabuhara, for whom failure is punishable by death, Hanada becomes entrenched in a confused and hectic state as he falls in love with Misako, kills his wife for cheating on him with Yabuhara himself, and becomes thoroughly obsessed with increasing his hitman status rather than losing it.

 

By the end of the film Hanada has caused harm to everyone around him due to his mental instability, and we are left with one major event: a final test from No. 1 (Koji Nanbara) where he and Hanada fight to determine who is the best hit man in an epic battle, an ending that stands tall beside cinema’s most decorated action-film showdowns.

 

One aspect that greatly enhances this film’s attractive narrative is Suzuki’s artistic use of extreme lighting; or rather, his masterful use of shadows. On numerous occasions Suzuki keeps the entire shot in darkness, artistically revealing small pockets of light in strange shapes, just enough for the viewer to understand what occurs in the scene. For instance, in the final sequence during Hanada’s battle with No. 1, we can barely see Hanada as he stumbles across a beautifully-dark boxing ring, where our only visual reference points are the shimmering reflections on his skin and the ring ropes. In another shot, we see a confused and drunk Hanada sliding across a large wall after killing his wife, on which strategic lighting illuminates a strange triangular shape. Hanada passes through this shape, moving back into the jet-black shadows that envelope the frame. One other striking example is when we see Mami after she is caught red-handed by Hanada at Yabuhara’s house. After Mami comes face to face with Hanada we see her terrified eyes placed beautifully within a rectangle of light, while the rest of her head and body is immersed in subtle shadows. Suzuki gives the impression of watching Mami through a window shade, where her full emotional state is brought to the surface by directing our attention explicitly towards her all-telling eyes.

 

Here a second truly unique aspect of Branded to Kill is revealed. Not only do these striking lighting techniques give the film a very artistic and experimental feel, they have deep thematic significance as well. The extreme contrast between overwhelming darkness and sharp pockets of light in his shots visually symbolizes Hanada’s downfall into the darkness of the hit man lifestyle, as the light in his life is being slowly extinguished by his excessive greed for higher status.

 

Indeed, numerous dark themes run deep in this film. Suzuki delves into the harsh effects of money, power and status, corruption, obsession, and even touches on a mysterious fascination with death. By doing so, Suzuki attempts to examine some of mankind’s worst vices, and more specifically, the Japanese culture itself. His focus on status is certainly a very “Japanese” issue, one that runs deep in much of Japanese cinema and culture, exemplified by the class struggles between characters in films such as Sisters of the Gion (Mizoguchi Kenji, 1936) or I Was Born But…(Ozu Yasujiro, 1932). Will Hanada, representing the Japanese culture itself, be able to “see the light” and escape the social and personal effects of obsessing over status? Will love prevail over personal success? These are the types of intriguing cultural questions that Suzuki brings up in Branded to Kill, resulting in its impressively relevant thematic depth.

 

As a warning, this film contains explicit nudity and gun violence. However, these elements are used tastefully and are necessary for Suzuki to convey Hanada’s fast-paced and dangerous hit man lifestyle. A masterful combination of self-reflexive themes, influential artistic expression, and a unique and appealing storyline gives us reason to classify Branded to Kill as a highcaliber work of cinema. Certainly, once Suzuki’s marvelous use of lighting and Hanada’s intriguingly dark narrative downfall ensues, the film’s glory cannot be denied. Thus, I feel that this film is a turning point for yakuza cinema, and gangster films in general, where artistic creativity and deep themes are not squandered by the need to entertain the audience. Rather, these elements work together in harmony. I highly recommend Branded to Kill, for its ability to thoroughly entertain, while also making us think about the disastrous societal and personal effects of money, greed, and power, long after we have popped the DVD out of the television.

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action yakuza

Blood, Bullets, and Bodies: The True Colours of Tokyo Drifter

Suzuki Seijun’s 1966 film Tokyo Drifter (Tôkyô nagaremono) can best be described as a pop art variation to the yakuza (gangster) film. The eighty-six minute feature uses splashy colours, avant-garde style and comic-book-coolness to tell the ruthless story of ex-Kurata mob member, Tetsu ‘Phoenix’ Hondo (Tetsuya Watari). While Tetsu can easily be deemed a reckless young killer, it is his honour and loyalty to his own ethics that sets him apart from the average trigger-pulling gangster. In other words, he kills to survive. Not only has his honour to the Kurata boss (Ryugi Kits) turned him into the mob’s (soon to be former) right-hand man, it has also guided him to abandon the profession altogether – a decision that leads him down a path with no escape. The only time Tetsu’s honour is tested is when faced by his love interest and local lounge singer, Chiharu (Matsubara Chieko). Without the option of going back on his decision, Tetsu has no choice but to kill or risk being killed (even if it means abandoning love). This cutthroat attitude mirrors the choices of Suzuki himself who endured endless backlash from the studios for taking his films “too far” and not adhering to their requests to alter what they saw as inappropriate and explicit content. Suzuki was eventually blacklisted from the studios and labeled an outcast much in the same way as his protagonist in Tokyo Drifter. With his own cinematic style working to glorify an otherwise standard yakuza film, Suzuki manages to tell a tale of betrayal and survival by appealing to the senses of his viewers.

At the beginning of the film Tetsu reveals his decision to retire from organized crime. As expected, Tetsu cannot simply walk away unscathed. With unsettled debts and ongoing feuds with the Yoshii rival gang, Tetsu soon finds himself a wanted man. While leading his enemies on a wild goose chase across Japan, the commonly described “James Bond” of Japanese cinema leaves nothing behind but bullets and bodies. While on foot, Tetsu learns that his once-honoured boss has turned against him. In other words, he must now dodge bullets from all angles. As Tetsu makes his way from sketchy nightclubs, to the northern mountains and eventually back to Tokyo, he enters into a series of jaw-dropping shootouts and bloodbaths. While Tetsu ventures off on his one-man journey, his relationship with Chiharu deflates. While the pretty young singer awaits the safe return of her lover, she continues her work at Kurata’s lounge in Tokyo and sings as if haunted by her desire to be loved by a drifter.

After watching the first few scenes of Tokyo Drifter the viewer will see that the plotline is noticeably messy. In true 1960s Warhol fashion, the meaning of the film is quickly rendered meaningless as it cannot compare to the psychedelic imagery and vivid colouring that dominates the screen. For example, the opening scene (which is shot in black and white) contains random bursts of colour such as a man walking by in a bright yellow suit and a cherry red gun lying on the ground. While we should be focusing our attention on the introduction to characters, Suzuki draws the eye elsewhere. Suzuki later uses colour to highlight the brutality of death by allowing rich human blood to pour all over a pure white set. These stylistic enhancements lend the film an unrealistic, cartoon-like quality and are constantly distracting viewers from the redundant plotline. The excessive use of manipulated colouring is still widely used today and can be seen in films such as Sin City (2005, Frank Miller) and Watchmen (2009, Zach Snyder). This manipulation allows the film’s overall style to parallel or even surpass the importance of the plot. With clear influences from the German Expressionist and French New Wave periods, Suzuki has managed to turn a film into an art exhibition.

Another way in which Tokyo Drifter manages to distract viewers from the plot is through the use of diegetic music. In many scenes we get to hear Chiharu sing while performing her act on stage. Suzuki seems to be paying homage to the Hollywood musical in these scenes as he chooses to have Chiharu express her sadness through song much like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (1939, Victor Fleming). This song underscores the theme of the film by describing Tetsu’s journey through lyrics: “Where is he that vagabond,””Always drifting,” and “oh, that drifter from Tokyo.” The song is later intertextually echoed through the whistling of Tetsu as he makes his way through a northern snow storm. The result is a chilling call and response from a sad lover to a lonely drifter.

Suzuki Seijun”s Tokyo Drifter is a thoroughly enjoyable experience that, although not for everyone (due to the film’s graphic fighting and violence), has made its colourful mark in cinematic history. Suzuki’s similarities to his protagonist make the film all the more interesting as both character and filmmaker are standing up for their own ethics and fighting for their beliefs. The film has influenced the likes of many modern-day filmmakers including Quentin Tarantino and his widely popular Kill Bill (2003/2004) series. Although the artistry is commendable, we are forced to wonder if the film’s bold style is holding up the plot or if the plot is bringing down the style. Regardless, Tokyo Drifter is a wild rollercoaster ride for the eyes and a vividly refreshing addition to the yakuza genre.

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