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| Images courtesy of Arrow Films |
Before
making his final and perhaps most globally known film role in Ridley Scott’s
cop drama Black Rain, late action movie star Yūsaku Matsuda and director
Tōru Murakawa collaborated on a trio of crime films that would usher in gun-toting
assassin Shōhei Narumi in the Yūgi or Game Trilogy at the
forefront of Japanese action cinema.
Generated
near the tail end of the 1970s, the films singlehandedly catapulted the Toei
star into the mainstream and formulated a brief actor-director team where both
film workers give their all for some of the roughest, toughest yakuza action
thrillers outside of Kinji Fukusaku’s prolific oeuvre.
Never before released outside of Japan until
Arrow Video scooped up the rights and prepared a limited edition blu-ray set, domestic
filmgoers keen on all things Asian cinema related now have a chance to sink
their teeth into this ultra-cool, brutally violent, stone cold yakuza assassin
trilogy featuring a one-of-a-kind character actor amoral, ruthless action
antihero at the epicenter.
The Most Dangerous Game (1978)
Lone long-haired musclebound rogue assassin-for-hire Shōhei
Narumi (Yūsaku Matsuda), first seen sheepishly losing a game of mahjong and
getting beaten up by his fellow players, is tasked with tracking down and
rescuing a hostage businessman involved in an expensive air defense project for
an electronics company. While other kidnappings
and killings of other fellow chairmen start piling up, a stray bullet kills the
chief hostage and sends Narumi’s warpath in circles, eventually revealing his
boss intends for Narumi to snuff out the stiff competition. Meanwhile after taking out a mobster he
forcibly kidnaps the guy’s mistress and soon finds an unlikely ally in the
battered woman he has little trouble with slapping around or sexually
assaulting when he feels like it. Eventually
our gruff, frankly unlikable rogue finds himself caught in the crossfire of
yakuza and police officers who may or may not be in cahoots with the bigwigs of
Tonichi Electronics.
Told almost entirely from Narumi’s half-drunken half-bored
gaze, the unscrupulous assassin seems like a bumbling idiot from the outset
sauntering from one unsuccessful financial misadventure to the next but when
its time for him to pick up the gun and shoot, he quickly turns into an expert
marksman who takes a bullet here and there but mostly delivers swift and
effective kills.
As with the Fukusaku
films and occasionally in Seijun Suzuki’s work, the lawless character traits
and mistreatment of women is to be expected in the trenches of this criminal
underworld and while Narumi’s chauvinistic actions towards the female
characters in here leave the viewer at an impasse, it is not unbecoming of the tough
lifestyle lived by these characters. Once
the bullets start flying and the action shootouts begin, the film transforms
into a fast-paced white knuckled tensioner with tons of explosive and squib
effects. Also skillful with the knife,
we’re treated to a handful of kills involving the knife being thrown at
someone’s throat from a distance. When
it comes to hand-to-hand combat, Narumi tends to lose his ass but give him a
pistol and he’ll take out every gangster in the room.
Sporting
(in all three films) a somber jazzy original score by Yûji Ôno and cool
widescreen cinematography by Seizô Sengen, the look and feel of The Most
Dangerous Game is taut and slick with an incredible chase sequence on foot
that goes on for several minutes.
Handheld photography, sometimes from an aerial position, gives the
action sequences an intensity reminiscent of the aforementioned Kinji
Fukusaku’s work with his frenetic shaky camerawork. Let it be known in spite of his character,
the camera absolutely loves Yūsaku Matsuda’s antihero. From his well-dressed leather coat, his thick
rimmed sunglasses and long hair channeling Bruce Lee by way of Viktor Tsoi, Matsuda
makes this rogue assassin into a mythic monster who has a meager moral compass
but is otherwise thoroughly out of shits to give.
Such a hot breakout success in the Japanese film arena, it
was inevitable not one but two more misadventures of the mercurial mercenary
would be greenlit featuring the same leading actor, same director, same
composer and changing up the screenwriters from Hideichi Nagahara to Koji Hama
and Susumu Saji for what would or would not become The Killing Game which
was released later in the same year as the first entry The Most Dangerous
Game.
The Killing Game (1978)
After the events of The Most Dangerous Game, Shōhei
Narumi finds himself being targeted after finishing a job and he goes into
hiding. Five years later Narumi reemerges
to find out he’s caught in the crossfire of two rival yakuza factions who have
both hired him to take one another out. Meanwhile
two young women who wear battle scars from his previous assignments come back
into his life. Despite his efforts to go
clean and start fresh, his criminal assassination way of life can’t help but
catch back up to him. Down on his luck
financially he soon finds himself firing his gun at just about every character
he comes into contact with. When his gun
is holstered he doesn’t have much meaning or self-worth to his life, proving his
ability to kill others is the only way he knows how to function.
One of the things one notices about this follow up to The
Most Dangerous Game is how lost and kind of aimless the protagonist’s
predicament is. Without an assignment or
someone to point the gun at, there’s not a lot for him to do and we feel his
sense of boredom and drifting focus as well as alliances. Despite all the killings he performs, one
gets the sense watching The Killing Game is that Narumi is a pinball
being bounced around the machine from place to place by his various
assignors. Though very skillful with the
handgun, we get the impression Narumi is a stray dog sauntering from one job to
the next and that the man isn’t in control of his own life.
As with the first film, The Killing Game sports
arresting widescreen cinematography from Seizô Sengen and the charismatically
jazzy score by Yûji Ôno is back as well with some of the key original themes
from the first film being repeated here.
As a middle entry, though superior to the first film, it doesn’t have
the same sense of urgency about itself as The Most Dangerous Game. Still, the film was made so close to the
previous film one wonders whether or not both pictures were shot in
succession. Whatever the case, this
middle child of The Game Trilogy continues the series in its dark and
nihilistic direction its protagonist can’t help but get pulled into whether he
wants to be there or not.
The Execution Game (1979)
Saving the best for last in the first real top to bottom
overhaul of what would or would not become the third chapter in The Game
Trilogy, The Execution Game starts out surreal and abstract and only
grows denser as its labyrinthine plotline unfolds. Opening on a hidden prison room where a
semi-conscious Narumi reawakens trying to shoot his way out only to find the
whole thing is a giant ruse designed to deceive him and force him towards doing
one last job, the film’s introduction will remind some viewers of Oldboy with
its mysterious prison. Eventually
retracing his steps, the film freely leaps in and out of flashbacks replete
with fade outs to bright white light that must’ve influenced Darren Aronofsky’s
use of transitions. His searching leads
him to a saloon singer he develops a relationship with who might be in cahoots
with the mercurial yakuza underworld he is tasked by to take out rival hitmen
from opposing yakuza factions.
Highly evolved in terms of the character Narumi himself as
well as narratively innovative with a most unnerving score by Yûji Ôno and far
more shadowy cinematography from Seizô Sengen, The Execution Game all
but completely revamps the series from top to bottom by finally granting the
rootless and ruthless Narumi something vaguely resembling a moral compass. Ordinarily a rapist in the previous two
films, we find him acting gentlemanly for a change and nearly successfully
leading a double life as ironclad assassin and handsome nice guy including
telling a young watch repair woman to avoid hanging out with shady guys. Much more technically sound than its predecessors
including a stunning shootout sequence near the end shot in an unbroken take, the
film takes the intentional aimlessness of the first two films and gives it
sharp focus so we find ourselves with Narumi doing detective work to connect
the dots.
Also perhaps the most violent and unforgiving of the
trilogy, The Execution Game while being a great standalone piece winds
up bringing everything together full circle for a finale that is at once satisfying
and suggests even naturally born bad people have a chance to redeem themselves. While The Most Dangerous Game and The
Killing Game were good extensions of the yakuza assassin neo-noir thriller,
it is The Execution Game that brilliantly brings everything all together
in one final mix while superseding what came before. All in all, the best film in an already solid
Japanese crime trilogy curated by Arrow Video in one of the year’s most
surprising releases.
--Andrew Kotwicki