This Japanese monochrome
film from 1967 is a mix of French New Wave and European art house in its
approach. From this you can probable tell it is not strictly a Yakuza or a gang
style film? With its irregular narrative, a subject matter that involves death,
sex, water and the smell of boiling rice (our main character gets a hard on from
the smell of rice cooking!) director Seijun Suzuki's Branded to Kill can
legitimately be described as a wee bit of an odd ball amongst the Japanese gangster
genre and for this reason was not treated by the Nikkatsu Corporation, who
financed 40 of Suzuki's films in 12 years, with the reverence it deserved, although
it does include the normal gangland ethic of eat or be eaten and of course the
normal macho posturing of men with guns. In fact the company sacked their long-standing
director saying that this latest film made no sense and no money. Suzuki did
not direct another film for ten years!
The deadly Misako. |
Koroshi no Rakuin is now regarded as a timeless
classic, and amongst many of its admirers, which includes John Woo, Park
Chan-wook and Quentin Tarantino, a cult movie. It involves ganglands self-employed
hit men who for the right amount of money will happily kill people. These men
are ranked in a strictly graded hierarchy with the story's main character Goro
Hanada (Jo Shishido) ranked as Number Three. He is married to a nymphomaniac,
who runs around there flat completely starker’s, and with whom he indulges in
various sexual shenanigans. Things start
to get weirder for Goro when the deadly Misako (the exotic Annu Mari) turns up
to offer him a “kill or be killed” contract, and his wife is secretly hired by
the mob boss to kill him!
Suzuki admits that he is happy to forgo realism for entertainment,
which is certainty not to the detriment of this movie. It a film that cannot necessary be placed in
any location and with its sultry 60’s jazz soundtrack and stunning cinematography
by the Suzuki regular Kazue Nagatsuka deserves its re-release this year (2014).
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