Years
before Nikkatsu’s contract player Seijun Suzuki and frequent leading man Joe
Shishido got the filmmaker blacklisted for his still bizarre and anarchic
surrealist jaunt Branded to Kill, the
maverick, anarchic auteur first joined forces with the rough and tough Nikkatsu
Diamond Guy for his 1958 mystery thriller Voice
Without a Shadow before taking on a leading role in the director’s
whimsical, jazzy and increasingly goofy police procedural about detective
Tajima (Joe Shishido) who on assignment to locate stolen firearms happens upon
long standing grudges and scores being settled out, all the while trying to
remain one step ahead of the curve before fellow yakuza grow increasingly
suspicious of Tajima’s comings and goings as his bubbly ex-girlfriend stage
performer threatens to blow his cover at every opportunity.
Partially
an old-fashioned yakuza action flick and something of an early warning sign to
Nikkatsu suits that hired hand Seijun Suzuki was beginning to stir the pot and
turn the tables on expectations of the genre picture, Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards! from the get go announces
itself as a hyperkinetic screwball musical comedy of sorts that doesn’t begin
to remotely take itself seriously.
Playing off of the plasticine cool of Joe Shishido’s cheekbones that
could kill and his suave, debonair leading man personality, the second collaborative
effort by Suzuki and his chief actor exists during a transitional period in the
director’s career where the by-the-numbers drudgery began to take its toll on
the filmmaker who gradually began populating his films with increasingly wacky
plot as well as audiovisual elements.
A
playful yakuza/police romp with a sharp sense of humor featuring throughout the
occasionally violent proceedings between warring yakuza factions and silly
banter between Tajima and his partners, this more or less is the Japanese
yakuza pictorial equivalent of François Truffaut’s
equally playful thriller Shoot the Piano
Player. Not purely due to the
director’s snarky, often fourth-wall breaking comic asides but for how it doesn’t
let anyone off of the hook despite having its tongue firmly planted in
cheek. In a rare feat, Suzuki’s yakuza
detective story achieves a keen balance between being a solid gangster picture
and a witty send up of the genre conventions and clichés undertaken in the
plotline.
Kaleidoscopic, wild and often
unhinged, Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to
Hell Bastards! is arguably the first true Suzuki picture that somehow
managed to find room amid the proceedings for some truly irreverent and
increasingly bizarre asides. While ostensibly
a straightforward genre picture, in the time honored tradition of it’s madcap
surrealist provocateur one goes into a Suzuki film expecting a straightforward
procedural only to find the rug pulled out from under you time and time again
in ways that aren’t always easy to keep up with.
Seen in light of the towering artistic
achievements the director would deploy with his still revered Taisho Trilogy, Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards! is from Nikkatsu’s
perspective at the time a fairly harmless and vibrant romp. Seen now however, one is inclined to point to
this as among the earliest chapters in the director’s career where he stopped
simply laying down for the drudgery and began inserting subversive, surreal and
at times anachronistic comedy into his films to challenge the system while setting
himself apart from the pack.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki