by ·Comments Off on Find Me Guilty (2006, Sidney Lumet)

One of those studio flops that nobody talked about except for Jonathan Rosenbaum, who called it Lumet’s most entertaining feature and rated it one of the top films of the year:

What makes it for me so timely and relevant a satire is what it demonstrates about our unacknowledged complicity with criminals — how much we enjoy them and how much we forgive them for their crimes, at least if they put on a good show for us, regardless of what we claim. Lumet, who coscripted this subversive tale himself, forces the issue by making this thug so likable and the forces of law and order so corrupt that we constantly have to reflect upon what we’re actually buying into.

Vin is very likable indeed, and goes around shooting down criminal conspiracy charges by saying gee-whiz stuff like “I guess if you’re Italian you should be in prison,” while a big jazz soundtrack keeps the energy high. The lighting looked made-for-TV but maybe that’s the sacrifice for setting your entire story in government buildings.

Vin constantly defends Big Boss Nick (Alex Rocco of The Godfather and Eddie Coyle) even though the others have disowned Vin and think he’s tanking their case. Peter Dinklage is Nick’s lawyer semi-collaborating with Vin, Annabella Sciorra (Cop Land) is Vin’s wife, Linus Roache (Nolan-Batman’s dad) the prosecutor, and Ron Silver (Heat Vision & Jack) the judge.

by ·Comments Off on The Longest Nite (1998, Patrick Yau)

Tony Leung is a bad cop in Macau whose specialty is smashing people’s hands to pulp, and Sean “Mad Detective” Lau is a tough guy working for one of the two gangs under uberboss Mr. Lung. Better than the same year’s A Hero Never Dies, this is nonstop gangster double-crosses. It ends where all 90s action movies must end: in an exploding box warehouse that doubles as a Wellesian mirror trap, as the killers become each other. They both die unceremoniously, as Mr. Lung arranges to erase both gangs and take the territory for himself, only his undercover man Lam Suet surviving. The girl is PTU star Maggie Shiu, Mr. Lung is from God of Gamblers, and loose cannon Mark was in Peking Opera Blues.

Bad cops:

Bad ass:

Mark with crazy lighting:

by ·Comments Off on Kanto Wanderer (1963, Seijun Suzuki)

Unique structure, starting with the girls in a crime town gazing at the local criminals, then spiraling into the lives of the criminals themselves. Who here is a Kanto wanderer, though?

Gutsy chick Hanako (Fukasaku regular Sanae Nakahara) gets sold into prostitution, sidelining the young women, while scarfaced Kat (Akira Kobayashi, between Rusty Knife and the Yakuza Papers) tries in vain to protect his boss while the rival gang’s warrior Diamond is on a bloody rampage. Kat is also hot for Diamond’s gambler-hustler sister (Hiroko Ito of Tattooed Life), flashing back to when he got his scar over her years earlier.

It’s a pretty okay story, but sometimes leads to great moments like this:

by ·Comments Off on White Heat (1949, Raoul Walsh)

Cagney and his dimwitted men rob a train and kill a lotta guys then hide out, but boring cop John Archer (Destination Moon) and his men are closing in, so Cagney confesses to a different, non-fatal job as an alibi for the train heist and goes to jail for a little while. “A very good friend of mine… me!” sounds like an Odenkirk line.

The cops want more on Cagney so they send Large-faced Eddie “Rock Around the Rockpile” O’Brien to jail as a mole to gain his trust. Rivalries in jail then prison break, while outside Big Ed steals his girl Virgino Mayo (Walsh’s Colorado Territory the same year) and they kill Cagney’s beloved Ma (Margaret Wycherly, fake mystic of The Thirteenth Chair). This is the movie where Cagney is a mother-obsessed seizure-prone psychopath, but I don’t find him any more psychotic than most movie gangsters. The cops track him to the next job with newfangled radio equipment – trapped in a burning building he’s made it, ma, top of the world.

by ·Comments Off on The Warriors (1979, Walter Hill)

A 1979 movie set in “the future”, which looks like… 1980. Cyrus is holding a conclave, wants to unite all street gangs to overthrow the cops and run the city, but so many gangs show up to the meeting and a Vincent Gallo-looking guy shoots Cy from the crowd then fingers the only witness as the shooter. After all this commotion the Warriors have to get back to their home borough with every creep gunning for them, but they don’t even figure out until the movie’s last 20 minutes why everyone’s mad at them. The action choreography is not great, nor sometimes are the goofy costumes (the overalls-and-rollerskates “punks” being the worst). But the comic-book Escape from New York adventure is compelling, and it was already giving West Side Story vibes with its gang stylings when I realized that the shooter is Jerry Horne, whose Twin Peaks costar Dr. Amp was in West Side.

Exactly the pose you make when you’re about to get shot:

Jerry Horne, cartoon version:

Warriors:

by ·Comments Off on Outrage Coda (2017, Takeshi Kitano)

I’m starting to wonder if these movies do have continuity and they’re not just starting over every time with the same cast playing new characters. I checked my writeups for parts one and two, and still don’t know for sure – but hey, one of those cops is back in this one.

The bulk of the movie is the higher-ups of a Japanese crime family plotting against each other: Ren Osugi, Sansei Shiomi, Toshiyuki Nishida. This goes on forever, and right when you can’t take any more of it, Kitano flies in with his buddy Ichi and they shoot a hundred guys. A few women appear, all of them prostitutes. I’m making this sound bad, but of course it’s a good time, and I’m looking forward to the brand new Kitano joint.

by ·Comments Off on Ichi the Killer (2001, Takashi Miike)

One of those movies I watched in grungy lo-fi copies enough times that I thought it would feel weird to see in HD, but Ichi is going to be kinda grungy no matter how much resolution you throw at it. It’s also a movie with two prolific actors who I see every year and call “that guy from Ichi The Killer” (most recently when BOTH appeared in Kubi). Lumped in with the Asian horror crowd when it came out, but its over-the-top death and torture scenes are mixed in with the perverse Ichi story, a yakuza war, fucked up music by Boredoms and much crazed humor.

Besides Ichi and Kakihara, we got Shinya Tsukamoto as Ichi’s handler/manipulator – everyone calls him an old fart then he’s revealed to be massively muscled, killing head enforcer Shun Sugata (Tokyo Gore Police chief). Sabu of Shinjuku Triad Society is an ex-cop turned bodyguard for Kaki’s gang to pay the bills, and Suzuki Matsuo (Shin Kamen Rider) plays their identical twin colleages. The rival who Kaki repeatedly tortures is Kitano regular Susumu Terajima.

Ichi’s traumatic backstory is only partly true, Kaki’s attacks on his rivals are based on misinformation and bad guesses, Ichi panics and kills the girls he likes and the boy trying to befriend him. Everyone’s a real mess – but at least Kaki gets what he wanted (to be killed).

by ·Comments Off on The Roaring Twenties (1939, Raoul Walsh)

Felt like following the early-30s gangster movie with a late-30s one. Apologies to Hawks, but this one’s much better, despite the shouty narrator explaining very recent history to the audience. Auto mechanic Cagney, bartender Bogart, and posh law student Jeffrey Lynn (Whiplash) are thrown together during WWI, then after the war Cagney can’t find work and turns to bootlegging with backing from new friend Gladys George (who’s also in postwar drama The Best Years of Our Lives). Schoolgirl Priscilla Lane who’d written him letters during the war is now a grown hottie and aspiring singer, so Cagney uses his power to get her nightclub gigs.

Things are looking good, then they bring on Bogart, who has no morals and starts killing people and getting them in trouble with the cops and rival gang led by sharp-chinned Paul Kelly (Adventure in Sahara). When Cagney calls a meeting for an all-gangster alliance Kelly doesn’t show, drops off the body of their man Frank McHugh instead. Nothing left but for the girl Cagney loves and the girl who loves him to watch his downward spiral ending in a hail of bullets – but belatedly. First Bogart takes over the business, years pass, Cagney becomes a drunken cabbie, the hottie marries the lawyer, old grudges resurface, hail of bullets.