“Hell Dogs” Theatrical Poster
Director: Masato Harada
Cast: Junichi Okada, Kentaro Sakaguchi, Mayu Matsuoka, Miyavi, Kazuki Kitamura, Shinobu Otake, Satoshi Kanada, Mai Kiryu, Arisa Nakajima, Kyoko
Running Time: 138 min.
By Henry McKeand
What happened to the good old-fashioned Yakuza flick? Japanese underworld tales were a dime a dozen pre-Y2K, but they’ve started to fade into the background along with gangster films the world over. Maybe meat-and-potatoes crime stories just don’t stand a chance in cineplexes packed with superhero epics and would-be franchise starters that cost more than $200 million to make.
Yakuza characters themselves certainly haven’t faded in popularity. They’ve popped up in some of the biggest AAA releases of the past five years (Deadpool 2, Bullet Train, and John Wick 4) as well as countless mid-budget actioners, but genuine, no-frills movies solely about the Yakuza are hard to come by. Kitano and Miike have continued to explore their criminal sides, and Kazuya Shiraishi’s Wolves films were refreshing throwbacks, but these are exceptions to the rule. Even 2021’s Yakuza-centric A Family functioned more as a social issue melodrama than a real thriller.
This is why last year’s Hell Dogs seemed so exciting. Directed by Masato Harada (Kamikaze Taxi and Bounce Ko Gals) and based on a manga by Akio Fukamachi, it’s the kind of unpretentious potboiler that we don’t get much of anymore. Rather than devolving into pastiche or commenting on its subject matter, it serves up a heaping platter of bloody pulp that delivers on the promise of its ominous tagline: “Pure. Violence.”
Harada’s approach to the genre may be straightforward, but the narrative is anything but. Here’s the short version of its labyrinthine setup: Goro (Junichi Okada) was a rookie cop whose life was upended when vicious robbers murdered a young woman he was starting to fall in love with. After enacting vengeance upon the men, he is recruited by a calculating police chief (Yoshi Sakô) who persuades him to go undercover in the Toshokai crime syndicate headed by the mysterious Toake (MIYAVI). To do so, Goro changes his name to “Tak” and befriends a volatile up-and-comer named Muro (Kentaro Sakaguchi).
This is only scratching the surface of what turns out to be a needlessly complicated plot. Opening scenes unload a huge amount of backstory, as characters throw out so many names and motivations that it’s easy to lose track. The fascinating relationship between Tak and Muro is ostensibly the emotional core, but this main thread is often sidelined in order to make room for scattershot detours. Love triangles and young romances and inner-family feuds and murderous cult backstories all add up to…well, not as much as you’d think.
It probably doesn’t help that Tak himself is mostly a cipher. The exact goals of his mission are not entirely clear. Despite being undercover, he witnesses killing and kills people himself constantly. Ever stranger, his murders don’t seem to have much of an effect on him. In this way, Hell Dogs separates itself from obvious forebearers like Infernal Affairs and New World. Here, there are no suspenseful pat-downs or wiretapped meetings or conversations about not knowing the difference between cop and criminal anymore. In Harada’s script, this difference is essentially non-existent. Tak’s chief is fine with his frequent murders, and no one seems to be concerned about actually arresting anyone.
That’s not necessarily a criticism. Nope: Hell Dogs is pure hardboiled ennui, more focused on stylish tough guy melancholy than any realistic police work. Harada has a knack at making killers and scumbags almost instantly iconic, and Junichi Okada as Tak is instrumental in selling this sense of gangster cool. Okada, who also explored the Yakuza world in the recent Fable romps, has the prickly swagger and hangdog weariness of greats like Lee Marvin or Joe Shishido. He uses his short stature to create a larger-than-life character who’s paradoxically most comfortable blending into the background.
Playing off of him is Sakaguchi’s unstable Muro. There’s a quiet closeness between the two men that is never fully explored, but it’s not a stretch to say that there’s a homoerotic undercurrent to their scenes together. In fact, an unexpected sensuality infects many scenes that may have otherwise been sterile. These moments of heightened passion combined with the breakdown of traditional police/outlaw morality make this a surprisingly effective Heroic Bloodshed story by the time the bullets really start flying in the final act.
And fly, they do. It’s not a straight up action movie, per se, but the violence is kinetic and frequent. There’s the prerequisite John Wick-esque shootout in the second half (the CGI blood is actually pretty good!), but the combat is at its best when characters are locked into down-and-dirty street fights that still leave room for balletic, emotional choreography.
But more than anything, this is a vessel for what only gangster films can provide: feudal murderers walking around in nice suits and threatening each other. It may sound superficial, but crime diehards know just how thrilling and nuanced this tried-and-true formula can be. Yes, the script could have been retooled to focus on the aching chemistry of the central characters instead of the jumbled mafia specifics, but Hell Dogs transcends its flaws and provides a bona fide old-school shot of adrenaline.
Henry McKeand’s Rating: 7.5/10
Wow, so there’s no moral dilemma?
I’m reminded of Deep Cover where Laurence Fishburne goes undercover as a drug dealer, commits many crimes to maintain his cover and hates himself for it only to find out it was all for nothing.
How does Junichi Okada deal with it all? Is he just resigned to everything around him? Maybe he does hate it and he’s not letting it show?
Yeah not really a moral dilemma. His boss wants him to kill, and Okada doesn’t seem that worried about anything (even letting a pretty rough torture scene play out in front of him). He seems to identify with the gangsters.
He’s described as being a medieval man. He’s a feudal soldier looking for some kind of honor, but it definitely doesn’t line up with modern ideas about morality.
Fishburne in Deep Cover is a far more easy-to-understand character, I’d say. Okada is kind of detached and broken. Writing about it makes it less interesting that it plays on screen. Without spoiling anything, it feels like it operates in the same moral world that a second New World would have. The same focus (or lack of focus) on grey morality.