by ·Comments Off on The Beast To Die (1980, Toru Murakawa)

Date is a psycho criminal, played by Japan’s coolest man Yûsaku Matsuda, but in this movie’s world violence tends to be awkward and clumsy and nobody is cool. Date is already being tailed by beardy detective Hideo Murota (also beardy as the first doctor in Dogra Magra) when he comes across an aggrieved waiter with frizzy hair (Rikiya of Tampopo and Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter) and enlists him in a bank robbery plot.

Turns out Date is a shellshocked war photographer (always you lose points when you bring real war atrocity footage into your dumbass crime picture, let this be a warning), which is why he “walks like a dead man” and acts weird around his girl even though he’s supposedly a classical music fan and she’s a hot concert pianist. The shellshock doesn’t explain why he tells really long stories though. Having recently watched Heat, I’m gonna be comparing all cops and robbers movies to that – these guys are more intense than Kilmer and company, killing both their girls before/during the big heist.

Pre-game pep talk:

Detective with 30 seconds left to live:

by ·Comments Off on Pleasures of the Flesh (1965, Nagisa Oshima)

Bad-luck dummy Itsushi (guy with the writing on his face in the same year’s Kwaidan) loves his student Shoko (Pale Flower) but she marries someone else. Itsushi tries to protect her by pushing some guy off a train, but is spotted and blackmailed(??) by another dummy who stole a suitcase full of money and wants someone he doesn’t know to watch it while he’s in prison. Itsushi decides he’ll just spend it all on women and let the criminal kill him when his sentence is up. First he shacks up with Hitomi (Green Maya in Gate of Flesh), the ex of a gangster who catches up with her, at the cost of her pinky finger. Then he buys Shizuko (Eros + Massacre), sending the money to her shady husband, who eventually comes to take her back. Then he’s with Nurse Keiko, who feigns illness for a whole month to avoid having sex with him, then tries walking into the sea, then marries him but doesn’t stop hating him. Finally he buys sexy deaf-mute Mari from a thug, who tries to steal the rest of the money. And when his true love Shoko comes back to him in need, he’s just finished spending it all, so she turns him in to the cops.

Hitomi with knife, about to lose a finger:

The year before Violence at Noon, based on a story by the Samurai Reincarnation guy. I’m really enjoying all the pre-1971 Oshima movies, should maybe watch more of those.

Keiko:

Mari:

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 Fireworks (1997, Takeshi Kitano)

It’s been a minute (twenty years) since I’ve seen this. Officer Kitano lives a depressing life in forced retirement with his sick wife, one friend dead, another crippled and suicidal, and loansharks after him. So he robs a bank, funds the suicidal friend’s new painting hobby, and takes his wife to the beach, fighting off the gangsters and capitulating to the cops.

Won the top prize at Venice, same year as Ossos, Chinese Box, The Tango Lesson, and 4 Little Girls. As usual, Josh Lewis gets it.

by ·Comments Off on Heat (1995, Michael Mann)

Hadn’t seen this in a while. I think I bought the blu (cheap!) to rewatch when the book came out, but given my current books backlog, by the time I get to Heat 2 I’ll have to rewatch the movie again (with pleasure).

Al’s wife is Diane Venora, queen of the Claire Danes Juliet and the Ethan Hawke Hamlet, and Bob’s new girl is Amy Brenneman, who starred with Al in 88 Minutes. Danny Trejo is their driver who gets no lines or closeups until his big death scene. Disastrous new teammate Kevin Gage (May‘s dad) has a side gig killing prostitutes. Kilmer gets away.

Gage with stalwart 90s actor Henry Rollins:

by ·Comments Off on Scorched Earth (2024, Thomas Arslan)

Our man Trojan is back, still doing clean, efficient jobs, and still getting screwed over afterwards when the client decides to kill his team instead of paying.

Smooth-haired hitman Viktor kills Computer Chris first, then old buddy Luca, while museum lawyer Rebecca is working both sides trying to recover the stolen painting.

Computer Chris is apparently old enough to have been in Petzold’s The State I Am In, Luca had parts in Head-On and the latest Guy Ritchie joint, new girl Marie Leuenberger does a lotta TV and hopefully has a bright future.

by ·Comments Off on The Big Steal (1949, Don Siegel)

Mitchum and Greer had costarred in Out of the Past a couple years earlier, teamed up here because her ex ripped them both off. William Bendix of The Blue Dahlia and Lifeboat is the army guy after Mitchum for the stolen money, turns out he’s in cahoots with the ex. Everyone flees to Mexico and runs into The Inspector General (Ramon Novarro, very good, starred in the 1925 Ben-Hur). Siegel just getting started in a long fruitful career, still a decade out from making the dire-looking Hound-Dog Man.

by ·Comments Off on In the Shadows (2010, Thomas Arslan)

Criminal Trojan who looks like the intersection of Adam Scott and Nathan Fillion gets out of jail and looks up some guys he used to work with: one guy so he can get paid for the job that sent him away, and the others so he can pull off One Last Job and steal enough cash to get outta this town. But he’s being tracked by another criminal associate Meyer who looks like a hot evil version of Richard Kind. Our guy’s friend Dora knows an armored car inside man Kruger, so they enlist retired Nico (Rainer Bock of De Palma’s Passion, a sinister cop in Barbara) and pull an easy heist. But Hot Richard tracked the action and wants his piece, finally Trojan is fleeing town with a stolen car and nothing else. Watching this now because Trojan will soon return in belated sequel Scorched Earth.

Christoph Huber in Cinema Scope:

Arslan’s stripped-down approach may well deserve the epithet “masterly,” but only in the modest sense of such acknowledged forebears as Irving Lerner or Don Siegel, whom Arslan cites as an influence for his preferred style of laconic, almost “neutral” acting he likewise admires in Hollywood films of the ’30s … Although the director says that the heist sum of 600,000 Euros was simply chosen in order to remain realistic, it seems hardly a coincidence that it is slightly higher than the budget of In the Shadows itself.

by ·Comments Off on The Temple Woods Gang (2022, Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche)

Local gang carjacks some valuables from a Saudi prince who likes to dance incognito at grungy clubs. The gang is friendly with Mr. Pons, whose mom just died, and they seem like good-natured dudes, hanging out feeding the pigeons, but the prince’s guy hires Elite Jim, who suspects these guys straight away, and quickly hunts/kills them all. Mr. Pons is an ex-army sniper, which means he’s got a long gun wrapped in a carpet hidden in a storage locker somewhere, and out it comes for some fast revenge. I wouldn’t have started watching if I’d remembered Rabah made the decently forgettable South Terminal, but this one’s better: a grounded version of the crime/revenge movie.