Finally buying a Blu-Ray player after my PS3 had played up one too many times so I could at last play Jose Ramon Larraz's The Coming of Sin (1978-also reviewed),this set,which has sat on my shelf waiting to be played for years (!) ,was at the top of my must-watch list. Seeing a 70's viewing challenge taking place, I at last went into battle.
View on the film:
Opening the first of their two huge box sets dedicated to the series, Arrow present a superb presentation, with the picture retaining a film grain and the soundtrack keeping the gunfire crisp, all tied up with detailed extras.
Attacking the audience with a manifesto statement of a opening shot of a mushroom cloud which descends on the crime-ridden streets of Hiroshima, a shot the film maker later said was done to establish "The genesis of the extreme violence with the gangsters almost appearing right out of the dust and smoke of the mushroom cloud...that's why we used the stock footage of the bomb going off at the beginning of the film."
Entering the project after studio head (and former yakuza member) Koji Shundo had been impressed by his work on Street Mobster (1972), directing auteur Kinji Fukasaku & his regular cinematographer of this period Sadaji Yoshida, take the refine styling of Neo-Noir and the experimentation of the Japanese New Wave (JNW), and strikes them both with a brutal Punk sensibility.
Placing the viewer up-close to assassinations performed by rival gangs, Fukasaku unloads a raw atmosphere of jagged JNW fluid cameras tracking Hirono (played by a fantastic Bunta Sugawara, who burns away the cool heroism of Noir loners of the past, for blunt-force rage) in the middle of crowds, jump-cutting to JNW newsreel blistering freeze frames and extreme close-ups of gangsters laying dead on the ground splashed over with red title cards recording their murder, (a major recurring motif of Fukasaku) and Toshiaki Tsushima's rich brass Jazz score announcing their deaths.
Loading up from the Film Noir tradition of "Ripped from the headlines" in adapting a Jingi Naki Tatakai series of articles written by Koichi Iiboshi that began in Weekly Sankei, which were based on a manuscript written by former yakuza member Kozo Mino,who wrote whilst in jail.
The screenplay by Kazuo Kasahara incredibly retains the newsreel roots by trimming exposition for JNW "in the moment", criss-crossing the various warring gangs to short, sharp, shock encounters, keeping wannabe rookie gangster Hirono on his toes in his attempt to be on the winning side in a ever shifting battle without honour and humanity.
View on the film:
Opening the first of their two huge box sets dedicated to the series, Arrow present a superb presentation, with the picture retaining a film grain and the soundtrack keeping the gunfire crisp, all tied up with detailed extras.
Attacking the audience with a manifesto statement of a opening shot of a mushroom cloud which descends on the crime-ridden streets of Hiroshima, a shot the film maker later said was done to establish "The genesis of the extreme violence with the gangsters almost appearing right out of the dust and smoke of the mushroom cloud...that's why we used the stock footage of the bomb going off at the beginning of the film."
Entering the project after studio head (and former yakuza member) Koji Shundo had been impressed by his work on Street Mobster (1972), directing auteur Kinji Fukasaku & his regular cinematographer of this period Sadaji Yoshida, take the refine styling of Neo-Noir and the experimentation of the Japanese New Wave (JNW), and strikes them both with a brutal Punk sensibility.
Placing the viewer up-close to assassinations performed by rival gangs, Fukasaku unloads a raw atmosphere of jagged JNW fluid cameras tracking Hirono (played by a fantastic Bunta Sugawara, who burns away the cool heroism of Noir loners of the past, for blunt-force rage) in the middle of crowds, jump-cutting to JNW newsreel blistering freeze frames and extreme close-ups of gangsters laying dead on the ground splashed over with red title cards recording their murder, (a major recurring motif of Fukasaku) and Toshiaki Tsushima's rich brass Jazz score announcing their deaths.
Loading up from the Film Noir tradition of "Ripped from the headlines" in adapting a Jingi Naki Tatakai series of articles written by Koichi Iiboshi that began in Weekly Sankei, which were based on a manuscript written by former yakuza member Kozo Mino,who wrote whilst in jail.
The screenplay by Kazuo Kasahara incredibly retains the newsreel roots by trimming exposition for JNW "in the moment", criss-crossing the various warring gangs to short, sharp, shock encounters, keeping wannabe rookie gangster Hirono on his toes in his attempt to be on the winning side in a ever shifting battle without honour and humanity.