Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards! (1963) Review

Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards! | Blu-ray (Arrow Video)

Director: Seijun Suzuki
Writer: Iwao Yamazaki, Haruhiko Oyabu
Cast: Joe Shishido, Reiko Sasamori, Tamio Kawachi, Nobuo Kaneko, Kinzo Shin, Naomi Hoshi, Asao Sano, Yuko Kusunoki, Kotoe Hatsui
Running Time: 89 min.

By Kelly Warner

Like most people, my first Seijun Suzuki film was the infamous Branded to Kill. It was unlike any crime movie I’d seen before; weird, visually inventive, playful, and shocking. Jo Shishido got off on the smell of rice, there were all these damn butterflies everywhere, and the plot sounded a bit like a videogame. It was nuts and I loved it. I then continued through Criterion’s offering of Suzuki titles (which sadly has not expanded much since that time about a decade ago), watching Tokyo Drifter, Gate of Flesh, Fighting Elegy, Story of a Prostitute, and Youth of the Beast, and loving each to varying degrees. I think Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell, Bastards! was the first Suzuki film I watched when I branched out beyond Criterion’s wacky C branding. I remember liking it but thinking it was decidedly less gonzo than the Suzuki films I’d seen before it.

I revisited the movie last night to watch the new Arrow Blu-ray. In the seven or so years in between the first time I saw it and last night, I’ve seen many more Suzuki films, and have come to understand that his filmography was far more varied than the weird art film action movies he’s best known for. He was very much a studio director and he shot whatever they handed him. It was only later, when resentment for the studio grind grew parallel with Suzuki’s skills as an artist that we got to see him truly let it all out and make some remarkably original genre entertainment with more regularity.

After having seen films like The Incorrigible, Teenage Yakuza, and a few others from Arrow’s Suzuki Early Years box sets, Go to Hell, Bastards! doesn’t seem like such an oddball anymore. It’s like the halfway meeting between his grittier action pictures and his goofier mainstream fluff. Sometimes these two competing tones don’t always blend as well as they should – one wishes some of the comic relief performers hadn’t played their parts quite so broadly – but Suzuki gives the film this breakneck, high tension, straight-faced lunacy that serves the story well.

Go to Hell, Bastards! opens with the most violent scene in the movie. An American military truck hands over the keys to some gangsters, who then begin unloading weapons into a new vehicle. They are ambushed by a Pepsi truck drive-by shooting. It’s chaos. Pepsi bottles shatter, the gangsters are slaughtered in the street, and the goods are stolen. It looks like the thieves are all about to get away with it, but one vehicle is struck by a bullet and breaks down on the road, leaving the driver Manabe (Tamio Kawaji) to be picked up by police.

It seems that Manabe’s gang has been ripping off the yakuza for weeks now. But nobody knows who they are or who they answer to. Manabe represents the first good clue to figuring it out, but the police can’t break him. Meanwhile, all the city’s rival yakuza clans wait outside the police station ready to gun down Manabe as soon as he’s released. They’re all armed to the teeth with swords and guns. At one point, we are forced to ask the question, hey is it legal for all of them to have guns? To which one police character explains away, saying that all the yakuza have hunting licenses and the right to carry their rifles if they wish. A news reporter covering the scene exclaims, “Can this really happen in Japan?!” And the answer is, of course, no. Only in America… It’s an early hint that the movie’s not really playing by the rules of gritty reality.

Puffy cheeked badass Jo Shishido plays private detective/information peddler Tajima. The P.I., who operates out of the Detective Bureau 2-3 office with two annoying assistants, smells an opportunity and introduces himself into the situation. He suggests to Chief Inspector Kumagai (Nobuo Kaneko) that only he, an unknown variant in the situation, can get what the cops are after. He offers to rescue Manabe upon his release, thus gaining his trust and an invite to meet the gang. All the while the police follow at a distance and try to keep the yakuza off their trail.

It’s a cool, not too simple/not too complicated plot of deception as Tajima goes undercover in the new gang. And these guys do not trust easy. They overturn every rock they can in order to look into his cover story. The police, meanwhile, try to keep up by planting actors in the right places to sell the lies. But Tajima is always on edge, fearful that the crooks may go one level deeper into the story than the police, thus blowing his cover.

Before the end, we get at least two more massive shootouts. Suzuki doesn’t film these as he normally would. He keeps the camera at a distance and just lets things go bang. It’s like we’re watching the action from across the street. Rarely during these sequences do we get a close-up on any of the actors, not even the leads. It’s chaotic and noisy. I’m not sure it’s particularly exciting, but it does fit the vein bulging, teeth gritting, wide-eyed mania of the movie.

This is an action movie where Jo Shishido has a song and dance number, shoots a machine gun through the street pavement to send a signal, and uses some very aggressive unwanted kissing to get information. Other strange parts include the undercover priests, the impotent bad guy, and the lesbian and nerd comic relief. One can sense the film tearing at the seams a bit, not because it is overstuffed but because every subplot/supporting character is trying so desperately to eclipse the other.

I like Shishido a lot here. He’s charming, cool, and funny. He has great chemistry with Nobuo Kaneko. The film’s title and ending suggest that Nikkatsu saw this as the start of a potential new series. It was not to be. I feel some sadness at that, because I would’ve loved to have seen some of these characters again. I say ‘some’ and not ‘all,’ because if the film has a major failing it’s that a few of its supporting roles are either weak or troubling. I did not like the way they wrote the leading lady, Chiaki (Reiko Sassamori), as a victim of abuse who then becomes a willing conspirator in crime only to be rescued by the film’s hero who then proceeds to abuse her, too. It’s discomforting. I also did not like Tajima’s comic relief P.I. partners played by Hiroshi Hijikata and Kotoe Hatsui. They simply are not very funny.

The film looks and sounds good on the new Arrow Video Blu-ray. The only new special feature is a 30-minute interview with film historian Tony Rayns, who gives us some context about how the film fit into the careers of Suzuki and Shishido. It’s a great extra for fans wanting to know more.

Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell, Bastards! is not one of Suzuki’s most iconic films. Not by a long shot. But I quite like it. I like it more today than I did when I first saw it many years back. It holds together better on second viewing and I was no longer struck by how ‘normal’ it was compared to the likes of Branded to Kill. It’s a high-strung action comedy with a great lead performance from Jo Shishido and one of the best titles in all of film history.

Kelly Warner’s Rating: 7/10