Before Suzuki got fed up with making them he was a master of the B-movie and this is a superb example. Set in early twentieth-century Japan, it is a rip-roaring all-purpose historical action picture. Our hero, Kikuju, a yakuza, runs off to Tokyo with his master's proposed bride on the way to her wedding and marries her, leaving a few elegantly-killed corpses behind. He works for corrupt building contractors- the normal methods of getting and keeping a contract are gang fights, blackmail and bribery. An assassin from his old gang is looking for him. Add to that: trade unionism, big business, a tattooed bandit-geisha femme fatale, an ex-yakuza going straight, a great detective in love with our hero's wife, sword fights and gun fights, loyalty and treachery, weeping and all-purpose tragedy, clashes between duty and honour, superb settings, extra-ordinary camera work, including beautiful shots that reflect Suzuki's later obsessions and all of it in less than ninety minutes. What more could you want?
4 Reviews
The angry waves and the flowers.
morrison-dylan-fan2 August 2020
Warning: Spoilers
After viewing all of the Arrow box sets and the lone Criterion discs dedicated to him,I decided to search to see if any other company has put out his works. Happily caught by surprise, I spotted a rare Seijun Suzuki DVD on auction,for under £5,leading to me surfing the angry waves.
View on the film:
The first of just four times across their decades-long team-up that he would do the art design,and get involved in the script process, the screenplay by Takeo Kimura/Kazuo Funahashi/ Koji Aoyama & Keiichi Abe cleverly takes the pulpy outline of two bands of samurai's at war with each other, and slyly bring them head-on into clashes taking place in the modern day, as lone voice Kikuji speaks up,and unionises his fellow samurai's, in order to protest against a rival gang gaining control of a port being built, whilst Kikuji also attempts to keep his romance with Oshige a secret.
Wearing a cape and cackling, Tamio Kawaji sparkles as the scar-faced hitman Yoshimura, hired by the rival gang,and a boss Kikuji had hoped he had left to fade into the past, to knock Kikuji out from the optimistic future he is trying to reach (the divide between the war and post-war generations being a major recurring theme of the director.)
Hoping to start with a clean slate, Akira Kobayashi gives a terrific turn as the fresh-faced Kikuji, who is given by Kobayashi a sinking feeling of the scars from his past returning.
Continuing to expand on his meticulous eye for detail in the last successive 5 shots during the opening credits sequence establishing Kikuji and Oshige's romance,their runaway status,and the agitation left behind that will catch up to them, drawn up with a scattering of dialogue,and directing auteur Seijun Suzuki's distinctive wide-angle outdoor shots.
Reuniting with regular cinematographer Kazue Nagatsuka, production designer Takeo Kimura, composer Hajime Okumura,and editor Akira Suzuki, Suzuki displays a warming confidence, in continuing to build upon his surrealist Japanese New Wave visual motifs, swapping down in action set-pieces covering long tracking shots down rugged terrain in incredibly fluid tracking shots.
Ending on a poetic snow covered final, Suzuki continues to build on a sharp use of jagged jump-cuts and distorted mid-shots catching a atmosphere of a sudden outburst of vilolence being just below the surface, as Kikuji swims against the angry waves.
View on the film:
The first of just four times across their decades-long team-up that he would do the art design,and get involved in the script process, the screenplay by Takeo Kimura/Kazuo Funahashi/ Koji Aoyama & Keiichi Abe cleverly takes the pulpy outline of two bands of samurai's at war with each other, and slyly bring them head-on into clashes taking place in the modern day, as lone voice Kikuji speaks up,and unionises his fellow samurai's, in order to protest against a rival gang gaining control of a port being built, whilst Kikuji also attempts to keep his romance with Oshige a secret.
Wearing a cape and cackling, Tamio Kawaji sparkles as the scar-faced hitman Yoshimura, hired by the rival gang,and a boss Kikuji had hoped he had left to fade into the past, to knock Kikuji out from the optimistic future he is trying to reach (the divide between the war and post-war generations being a major recurring theme of the director.)
Hoping to start with a clean slate, Akira Kobayashi gives a terrific turn as the fresh-faced Kikuji, who is given by Kobayashi a sinking feeling of the scars from his past returning.
Continuing to expand on his meticulous eye for detail in the last successive 5 shots during the opening credits sequence establishing Kikuji and Oshige's romance,their runaway status,and the agitation left behind that will catch up to them, drawn up with a scattering of dialogue,and directing auteur Seijun Suzuki's distinctive wide-angle outdoor shots.
Reuniting with regular cinematographer Kazue Nagatsuka, production designer Takeo Kimura, composer Hajime Okumura,and editor Akira Suzuki, Suzuki displays a warming confidence, in continuing to build upon his surrealist Japanese New Wave visual motifs, swapping down in action set-pieces covering long tracking shots down rugged terrain in incredibly fluid tracking shots.
Ending on a poetic snow covered final, Suzuki continues to build on a sharp use of jagged jump-cuts and distorted mid-shots catching a atmosphere of a sudden outburst of vilolence being just below the surface, as Kikuji swims against the angry waves.
Stunning compact stuff by Suzuki in his best period.
chaos-rampant11 April 2010
Suzuki doesn't have a minute to spare in what Nikkatsu probably intended as another flipside programmer for their double-bills. He has to get things going fast so we get a procession walking through a sweeping panorama of purpleorange skies and we get flashes of a brief swordfight and then someone is shouting "Bring me back my wife Oshige!!" and we cut to three years later. General Suzuki knows what he's doing though, Nikkatsu wants a potboiler from him and he'll give them what they want except it's going to be his way. He leaves the mass of the movie to battle it out in a field as two rival yakuza factions rival for control of the building of a dockyard, the usual ninkyo eiga tropes take place there, yakuzas club each other to death in shouty overactivity and among them stands the noble yakuza who wants to do good and falls in love with a shy geisha (we're in Toei territory here, the kind of film that made Koji Tsuruta and Ken Takakura huge stars in 60's Japan, before Fukasaku rolled in with his anarchic yakuza fiends who had nothing noble about them), while he sends the rest of the movie on a flanking march through scrubby oak and thorny undergrowth deep in the rear.
When the flank catches up with the rest of the movie, we're among obviously artificial mounds of snow near a train station exchanging sword blows with a mysterious figure dressed in black suit and cape like a villain escaped from a Nemuri Kyoshiro movie, and we then discover exactly whose wife Oshige really is and the movie explodes with genuine emotion. For my taste, rebellious/frustrated Suzuki of subsequent movies exchanged the iron discipline of a strict genre movie for something that looked impressive but often meandered directionless with nothing to do, and while most critics are looking at the obviously stylized and "artsy" of Branded to Kill for their praise, Suzuki was doing some of his best work at around this point. Hollywood very rarely saw film-making of this quality in the early 60's.
When the flank catches up with the rest of the movie, we're among obviously artificial mounds of snow near a train station exchanging sword blows with a mysterious figure dressed in black suit and cape like a villain escaped from a Nemuri Kyoshiro movie, and we then discover exactly whose wife Oshige really is and the movie explodes with genuine emotion. For my taste, rebellious/frustrated Suzuki of subsequent movies exchanged the iron discipline of a strict genre movie for something that looked impressive but often meandered directionless with nothing to do, and while most critics are looking at the obviously stylized and "artsy" of Branded to Kill for their praise, Suzuki was doing some of his best work at around this point. Hollywood very rarely saw film-making of this quality in the early 60's.
Frenetic brilliance
josephbleazard6 May 2008
I must back up the previous reviewer. This is easily one of Suzuki's best pictures and deserves a much wider audience. At the moment I am writing this it has only 1 IMDb comment - there should be essays and theses on this piece. This is a B movie but one where Suzuki enjoyed a freer rein than in others I have seen. He was also blessed with a charismatic lead and supporting characters full of the deviance he loved to explore.
The film itself is a frenetic exploration of modernity and corruption and the collapse of codes of honour in the face of commerce. Add to this gratuitous action and a love story told with a kind of melodramatic fury that stays with me today, despite the fact that it only takes up about 10 minutes of the films narrative.
This film is frantic at only 90 minutes long. Suzuki threw the pot the kettle the sink and even the camera at this film. And he caught it. I don't know what that means. I don't know what this film means. But if you like Suzuki watch it and piece it together and come to appreciate just how grand a scope a cinematic master can encompass in a 90 minute action epic.
The film itself is a frenetic exploration of modernity and corruption and the collapse of codes of honour in the face of commerce. Add to this gratuitous action and a love story told with a kind of melodramatic fury that stays with me today, despite the fact that it only takes up about 10 minutes of the films narrative.
This film is frantic at only 90 minutes long. Suzuki threw the pot the kettle the sink and even the camera at this film. And he caught it. I don't know what that means. I don't know what this film means. But if you like Suzuki watch it and piece it together and come to appreciate just how grand a scope a cinematic master can encompass in a 90 minute action epic.
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