Arrow Video: A Certain Killer/A Killer's Key

Images courtesy of Arrow Video

Arrow Video’s interest in the Japanese Yakuza crime subgenre knows no bounds, having recently released everything from Outlaw Gangster VIP to the two-film Graveyards of Honor set, making them at the global forefront of Asian crime cinema curators.  Their latest release sure to please genre fans and Asian cinephiles in general consists of Daiei jidaigeki director Kazuo Mori’s two-film series A Certain Killer and A Killer’s Key, two of three films made by the director in the same year of 1967.  

Co-written by Blind Beast director Yasuzo Masumura, Shinji Fujiwara and Yoshihiro Ishimatsu, the postwar yakuza tales focus on Shiozawa (Raizo Ichikawa) a former soldier of the Japanese army hiding out either as a restaurant manager or as a theater instructor lying in wait for the next contract killing assignment to come his way from fellow yakuza gangsters.  In both movies brought together by Arrow Video in a new digital restoration, we get a look at a kind of Yojimbo lone wanderer trying to live a normal life only to get dragged back into doing what he does best: assassination.

 
In the first film A Certain Killer our lone antihero maintains a low profile working as a chef at a sushi restaurant.  In actuality it is a front for his true vocation as a professional hired killer whose sneaky method of murder consists of poisoned needles sneakily stabbed into the necks of his victims.  Initially approached by Maeda (Mikio Narita) to take out a rival yakuza leader, things get complicated by the arrival of a free-spirited young street woman named Keiko (Yumiko Nogawa) who soon with another fellow comrade conspire together to try and smuggle out drugs while taking on thugs on opposite sides of the yakuza fence.  

Not even months later, the second film A Killer’s Key relocates the hero inside a dance instructor using the name Nitta maintaining a low profile while being tasked once again by the yakuza with trying to avert a seismic scandal threatening to tie the yakuza to powerful political figures.  It’s messy business but it was fun to see Shiozawa drifting in and out of stage theater and contract killer mid step.

 
Boasting rich scope cinematography by Rashomon and Ugetsu cameraman Kazuo Miyagawa and an arresting, energized score by Red Pier composer Hajime Kaburagi across both movies, Kazuo Mori’s scenic postwar yakuza yarns are a lot of fun and purport a different, sneakier kind of lone assassin.  Featuring strong performances across the board, particularly from Raizo Ichikawa and Yumiko Nogawa as the free-spirited Keiko from the first film, both movies represent Daiei yakuza fare debatably at the genre’s height.  

Precluding what would or wouldn’t become Seijun Suzuki’s madcap bonkers Branded to Kill with an equidistant amount of debonair cool, A Certain Killer and A Killer’s Key are also beset by visually arresting psychedelic title sequences perfectly augmenting the late 1960s period in which they were made.  Evocative of the James Bond movies with multicolored lava lamp effects, both perfectly set the mood for these ballets of bullets and poisoned needles.
 
Arrow Video’s limited blu-ray set comes with both films housed on one disc alongside sizable extras including a thirty-minute introduction to the films by Japanese film scholar Mark Roberts and a new audio commentary by Tony Rayns.  As always, Arrow have included reversible sleeve art on the case with a collectible slipcover and the set comes with an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring essays by Jasper Sharp and Earl Jackson.  

Fans of the yakuza and/or crime subgenre in general will find much to enjoy here involving a calculating master assassin who in both movies finds his situations complicated by uncontrollable outside factors including but not limited to characters like Keiko.  Arrow’s set is solid and those keen on expanding their yakuza film horizons are highly inclined to snatch this up while you still can.

--Andrew Kotwicki