Is this China’s answer to Steven Spielberg’s upcoming Ready Player One? Doubtful. Directed by Han Yan (The House That Never Dies), this forthcoming cyber-punk actioner is titled Dream Breaker, and judging from its trailer, one can expect a visual, Blade Runner-ish treat.
According to THR, Dream Breaker stars actress Chen Duling (Namiya) as a young woman who must fight her way through a mysterious, holographic game world designed by her late father to avenge his death. Rising star Song Weilong (Catman) plays the love interest, while the provocative Japanese filmmaker, actor and artist Sion Sono (Tag, Why Don’t You Play in Hell?) executive produces.
Dream Breaker hits domestically on November 9th. Check out the film’s Newest Trailer below:
Despite their doors being shuttered over a decade ago, Tower Records is a place that continues to loom large in many consumers’ nostalgic hearts. Don’t believe me? Just watch 2015’s All Things Must Pass, which –– while not a great documentary –– is admirably devoted to preserving the memory of the once great entertainment franchise. For media fans all over the globe, Tower served as a one-stop shop for vinyl and CDs, magazines, and other wares. Back in the pre-Blu-ray era, my local Tower was also the premiere destination for Asian films on DVD, and I spent countless weekends hoping to find the next mind-melting kung fu or action movie.
In fact, I owe Tower Records for introducing me to perhaps our greatest purveyor of extreme Japanese cinema: the one and only Takashi Miike. In those early Internet days, it was honestly difficult to find information on any Japanese movie that wasn’t called Battle Royale. So imagine my surprise when I wandered through the Foreign Film section at Tower Records and a knowledgeable employee (who I mysterious never saw again) began chatting me up about this director named Miike, whose work was just now finding its way to American shores. I was intrigued by the cover art and descriptions for a bevy of movies that couldn’t have appeared more disparate: the chilling bait-and-switch of Audition, the manga-come-to-life that is Fudoh: The New Generation, and the zombie-comedy-musical Happiness of the Katakuris. Any of those films would have been an ideal starting point for a budding Miike fan, but for some reason my interest was drawn elsewhere.
“Fudoh – The New Generation” Japanese Theatrical Poster
Maybe it was my love of Asian gangster movies; maybe it was the evocative title; or maybe it was the Tower employee assuring me that the film contained the first ever parody of The Matrix’s bullet time. Either way, my introduction to Takashi Miike came with my purchase of City of Lost Souls that afternoon. It’s a Miike effort that is discussed rarely, if ever, these days, but in its own way it worked as a stellar entryway into Miike’s mad, mad world, and in any event, by the time the credits rolled I knew I needed to see more.
On the surface, City of Lost Souls is your standard lovers-on-the-run tale, not so different from the Tarantino-penned True Romance, as the Brazilian-Japanese protagonist Mario and his Chinese girlfriend Kei (played by iconic Nineties Hong Kong actress Michelle Reis) find themselves in the crosshairs of Chinese Triads and Yakuza crime bosses while stranded in a country that would love to see them deported. In Takashi Miike’s hands, however, City of Lost Souls becomes a live-action cartoon, crackling with the kind of manic energy and punk rock attitude that defined the opening ten minutes of his 1999 breakthrough Dead or Alive. Early in the film, we watch as Mario and Kei leap out of a helicopter and land on their feet as unharmed as the Road Runner. Later, the lovers lie asleep in bed as a spider crawls across Kei’s shoulder, only for it seamlessly merge with her skin as a tattoo. I haven’t even mentioned the cockfight where the chickens imitate Keanu Reeves’ gravity-defying kung fu. If it isn’t already clear, we have departed reality and entered Miike land. And it is a terrifying and wonderful place to be.
There’s a touch of social commentary here, as Mario’s heritage speaks to the fact that Brazil is home to the largest population of Japanese outside of Japan, and many of those Japanese have faced discrimination when migrating back to their homeland. That said, City of Lost Souls is not a film concerned with realism –– realism would only get in the way of the fun Miike has in store, like two crime bosses engaging in a deadly game of ping-pong. This is a film defined by Miike’s go-for-broke lunacy, making it an exemplary work of this period of his career, when he was just beginning to carve out a niche for himself away from the Direct-to-Video market.
“The City of Lost Souls” International Theatrical Poster
By selecting both Time & Tide and City of Lost Souls as influential films in my life, it’s obvious to me that my teenage self was most impressed by visual inventiveness and kinetic action. Saying a movie resembles a music video carries something of a stigma these days, but there was a time when filmmakers as diverse as Wong Kar-wai and Takashi Miike were adopting the fluid camera work, surreal lighting, and rapid-fire editing regularly found on MTV in the Nineties, and using it to innovate global cinema. There’s a certain roughness around the edges to City of Lost Souls, and one senses that Miike’s heart may not have been in it the way it was for his more esteemed works, but its devil may care stance and irreverent humor earn it a place in the Miike canon. It’s also one of the few Japanese action movies I can think of that reflects the ethnic diversity of modern Tokyo.
My sense is that City of Lost Souls is not a film that immediately springs to mind when considering the work of Takashi Miike. I myself am actually due for a rewatch –– it’s been years. But there are sequences and moments peppered throughout the movie that have stayed with me in the decade since, and, much like Time & Tide, it was a film that transformed me from casual viewer to full-fledged connoisseur. Little did I know when I plucked City of Lost Souls from the shelves at Tower Records, but I was taking another early step into the world of collecting (and obsessing) over Asian action cinema. Directors like Takashi Miike have ensured it’s been as wild as a helicopter ride with Mario and Kei.
An upcoming documentary, titled Femme Fatales: Seen & Unheard, is in-the-works from actress, martial artist, producer and director, Maria Tran (Truy Sát, Tiger Cops). The full press release follows…
For the past decade of her life, Fairfield-based filmmaker Maria Tran has devoted her life in making Hong Kong cinema homage action films in her backyard. She and her female led film production company Phoenix Eye will soon be embarking internationally across South East Asia investigating the role of Asian action cinema and the role of women for her self-funded independent documentary titled Femme Fatales: Seen & Unheard.
Traveling from Hong Kong to Vietnam and then finally the Philippines, they will be interviewing and interacting with former and current female action stars, emerging actors, martial artists, film directors, producers and academics who will share their insights and experiences.
“If there’s one thing I would like to add to Australian cinemas, is female-led stories in the martial arts action genre. This project will allow me to connect with some of the world’s most talented, showcase their plight and allow the film industry to see the often-unspoken contributions of women in this male-dominated genre,” says Maria.
Mike Leeder, who has worked with action megastars such as Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Donnie Yen and Jean Claude Van Damme and is known as an expert in Asian action cinema is on board this project as associate producer.
“Australia used to have its own brand of genre cinema, action, horror, martial arts and more! Action is international, it doesn’t need you to understand the language, the culture or the politics, it’s the cinema of the underdog! We all need a hero or a heroine!,” adds Mike.
We’ll keep you updated on Femme Fatales as more updates are available. For now, don’t miss the production Trailer below:
Warner has enlisted Andy Muschietti to direct an English language, Live-action adaptation of the popular manga series, Attack on Titan. Muschietti is best known for 2013’s Mama and the 2017 adaptation of Stephen King’s It.
Written and illustrated by Hajime Isayama, Attack on Titan is set in a world overrun by giant, man-eating creatures known as Titans (via Collider).
Director: Kim Sung-Hoon Writer: Won Shin-yun Cast: Hyun-Bin, Jang Dong-Gun, Jo Woo-Jin, Kim Eui-Sung, Jeong Man-Sik, Lee Sun-Bin Running Time: 129 min.
By Paul Bramhall
Less than 3 years ago Korea spawned one of its most unlikely breakout hits, with the zombie action thriller Train to Busan. While personally I didn’t find the concept of zombies on a train to be executed as entertainingly as it could have been, there’s no doubt that many did, and there’s already been a US remake announced as being in development. Surprisingly, on local soil zombie mania didn’t take hold the way many expected it to, and it wasn’t until the beginning of 2018 that rumbles of another Korean zombie flick began to appear on the net. When I first heard there was going to be a production featuring zombies in a Joseon era setting, I’d hoped that it meant Ryoo Seung-wan’s long gesticulating period zombie movie Yacha had finally secured funding.
Alas my hopes were unfounded, however I figured a Joeson era zombie movie is still a mighty cool concept, regardless of who’s in the director’s chair. It’s one of those ideas that’s more difficult to get wrong than it is to get right – I mean, zombies running around in ancient Korea, why did Seung-wan have such a hard time getting his idea off the ground 10 years ago!? In any case, in 2018 the idea has come to fruition in the form of Rampant, helmed by director Kim Seong-hoon and scripted by Won Shin-yun (director and writer of Memoir of a Murderer). It’s been 2 years since Seong-hoon’s sophomore feature, the entertaining action comedy Confidential Assignment, and Rampant reunites him with leading man Hyun Bin, who’s kept himself busy in-between with starring roles in The Swindlers and The Negotiation.
Sure enough, Rampant hits the ground running with an assured opening. After some arms dealing with the Dutch on a merchant fleet sees one of the Korean ensemble get bitten by a rabid Dutchman (sounds like the name of a pub), the bitten victim soon finds himself back on home soil with an unquenchable appetite for meat. When his wife returns to their abode to find him feasting on their child (note: this sounds much more graphic than it is, which is to say, not at all), it kicks off the beginning of a zombie outbreak in the small port town. Naturally, this should be the part when all hell breaks loose, but as it turns out Rampant has other ideas. Instead, the plot quickly changes its focus to provide the audience with a dose of palace intrigue, as we’re introduced to a paranoid emperor convinced members of the palace are planning an uprising against him.
Paranoid emperors, so sure of the conspiracies being plotted against them, are to palace intrigue what vengeful students seeking to avenge their master’s death are to kung fu movies. We’ve seen it 1000 times before, so it better be done well. The emperor in question is played by Kim Eui-sung (the selfish businessman from Train to Busan), and there is indeed a plot being hatched against him, but it’s by his trusted Minister of War, played by Jang Dong-gun (Seven Years of Night), rather than those he suspects. When the pure hearted son of the emperor (played by Kim Tae-woo in a special appearance) commits suicide in front of his father, in order to spare the lives of his wrongly accused colleagues, it prompts his brother (Hyun Bin) to return to Joseon from Qing to find out exactly what’s going on.
If you’re wondering why a whole paragraph of zombie movie plot description has gone by with no mention of any zombies, then you’re not alone. Seong-hoon’s movie is a strange one, and more than once it feel like the zombies are a distraction rather than the main attraction. The tone veers wildly all over the place, from the horror of the initial scenes, to the heavy handed seriousness within the palace, to the comedic hijinks of Hyun Bin. Indeed, Hyun’s character of the crown prince is more interested in checking out if Korean women are as beautiful as the Chinese, rather than indulging in any royal duties. Together with his bumbling sidekick, played by Jung Man-sik (Asura: City of Madness), it’s Hyun who stumbles across the zombie outbreak, upon arriving at the same port town where it started, only to find it deserted.
What follows the discovery leads into the first zombie attack, in which we learn the undead of Rampant also share some vampire like characteristics. While their appearance may be distinctly zombie like, they also suffer from being exposed to sunlight, meaning they can only come out at night. Admittedly watching Hyun slash through zombie hordes with his oversized sword is a lot of fun (and a zombie death involving him thrusting said sword while one is biting down on its blade is a standout), however the first scene also serves to highlight everything that’s wrong with Rampant’s zombie concept.
First up – they’re just not that scary. A zombie should have you living in mortal fear that one bite could turn you into an undead cannibal like them. However the zombies here seem more likely to run into the edge of a sword than have any real chance of mauling someone. Their blatant lack of intelligence is another factor, and never get their numbers up to a level where you legitimately feel a sense of danger. In a depressing trend, all of the complaints I had against Train to Busan are likewise applicable here – there’s no imaginative zombie deaths (with the exception of the one mentioned in the previous paragraph), and nothing that could truly be described as horrific ever actually happens. Much like in Train to Busan, here being overwhelmed by a group of rabid zombies has never looked so bloodless.
Speaking of blood, it’s another issue, as almost all of the blood on display is for the most part CGI, and 2005 looking CGI at that. The hacking and slashing has very little impact, when the blood you’re witnessing has so clearly been added in post-production. Any level of realism is further damaged by the fact that, despite Hyun wading through several waves of undead attackers, his white costume has barely a stain on it in comparison to how many he’s killed. If you’re afraid of making a zombie movie too bloody, then maybe it’s time to rethink if you should be making one at all. Rampant needed to take a page out of Japan’s I Am a Hero, but instead it seems to have looked towards the latest palace set K-drama for its inspiration, with the inclusion of the zombies too often feeling like a novelty rather than a threat.
Even within its own bland set of rules, Rampant strays from its own logic. By the time the inevitable happens, which sees Hyun (who’s now accepted his destiny and rekindled his love for Korea) versus Dong-gun (who’s now become a super-zombie human hybrid), most of the audience will be too busy questioning what’s going on rather than paying attention to the lacklustre sword clanging. Indeed it’s never clearly addressed exactly why Dong-gun manages to avoid fully turning into a zombie, and instead opts for looking like he has a hangover from hell paired with anger management issues. However even less convincing is Hyun’s apparent turn-around from the responsibility shunning, skirt chasing Qing dweller, to Joseon loving king of the people, full of compassion and bravery.
It’s fair to say that Rampant has a bizarre undercurrent of not so subtle patriotism running through it, one which feels more like it belongs in a Park Geun-hye era production than something out of 2018. The final scenes make it clear that a love for one’s country is far more important than any zombie outbreak, a tone which stretches to supporting characters death scenes as well. There are a number of minor character deaths which are inappropriately given swathes of melodramatic screen time, despite us not really knowing much about them, or really caring that they’re dead. It’s a zombie movie, characters are supposed to bite the dust, stirring music and emotional final speeches aren’t required every time.
I said at the beginning that a Joseon set zombie movie would be almost impossible to get wrong, so if anything, Rampant proves that nothing is impossible. What should have been an entertaining zombie romp, combining hanboks and horror, has somehow come out as a dull and lifeless (no pun intended) exercise in monotony. When you have hordes of the undead that don’t feel like a threat, you have a movie that’s destined to fail, and that’s the biggest problem here. Just like the zombies are missing a pulse, although it pains me to say it, so is Seong-hoon’s latest.
Renny Harlin, noted Hollywood film director known for his 90’s blockbusters Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger, is preparing to helm Operation Wild, which we believe is a totally different film than Operation Somalia (Harlin’s other ‘operation’ film that’s also in-the-works).
The upcoming thriller will be Harlin’s fourth (or fifth, if Somalia is still happening) Chinese film, following Jackie Chan’s Skiptrace and the upcoming Bodies at Rest and Legend of the Ancient Sword.
According to AFS, Operation Wild involves two elite combat warriors from China and India who lead covert forces to shut down a global, wildlife poaching, criminal organization.
That’s all we know folks – but keep it here for more updates.
On March 5, 2019, Well Go USA will release the Blu-ray/DVD for Burning (read our review), from director Lee Chang-Dong (Green Fish, Oasis, Secret Sunshine). This 2018 Cannes winner stars Steven Yuen (The Walking Dead) and Yoo Ah-In (Veteran) and Jun Jong-Seo (via THR).
Jong-soo, a part-time worker, bumps into Hae-mi while delivering, who used to live in the same neighborhood. Hae-mi asks him to look after her cat while she’s on a trip to Africa. When Hae-mi comes back, she introduces Ben, a mysterious guy she met in Africa, to Jong-soo. One day, Ben visits Jong-soo’s with Hae-mi and confesses his own secret hobby.
Director: Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire Cast: Joe Cole, Vithaya Pansringarm, Panya Yimmumphai, Somluck Kamsing, Billy Moore, Nicolas Shake, Sura Sirmalai, Sakda Niamhom, Komsan Polsan Running Time: 117 min.
By Kelly Warner
We first meet British boxer Billy Moore preparing for a small kickboxing match in Thailand. The fight doesn’t go well for Billy. After the bout, he surrenders to his drug of choice, yaba (known as the ‘madness drug’). We don’t get to know much more about Billy before the cops kick down his door and lock bracelets over his wrists, but it’s clear that he is a lost soul in a foreign land. Whether he wanted this – maybe he purposefully lost himself in drugs and violence – is never really addressed. Billy barely understands Thai and the film does not allow the audience to understand much more than he does. Most the dialogue in the film goes untranslated. The result is that we, like Billy, feel a bit lost and lonely, too.
Billy is thrown in prison for his use of narcotics. He’s suffering from withdrawal, a lack of understanding, and overwhelming despair. On his first night, Billy is locked up with the general population, who all share one big floor as a bed. Rolling back and forth on the floor in pain, Billy hugs his nearest sleeping neighbor. A transwoman in the cell tells him to stop that; he’s not sleeping, he’s dead. And this is the good part of the prison. But after an altercation over spilled water, Billy is thrown out of gen pop and in with the harder criminals. Gangsters, all of whom are covered with tattoos, taunt and threaten Billy as soon as he steps into his new cell block. That first night there is a gang rape, the next morning there is a suicide.
A Prayer Before Dawn is a grueling, brutal true story about human suffering and devastating loneliness. When a prisoner steps out of line and lies to the guards, they drag him off and beat him, with his cries playing over loud speakers for all to hear. Desperate for his numbing drug, Billy takes jobs beating up prisoners that the guards don’t like in exchange for the yaba. But this only fuels his self-loathing, leading him spiraling down into the abyss. I was occasionally reminded of Midnight Express, the classic 1978 prison film from Alan Parker that shook me up with its portrayal of hell behind bars.
Billy is played by up-and-comer Joe Cole (Green Room), who brings the goods whether he’s raging against a prison population that doesn’t understand him or silently absorbing the mental torment of loneliness in hell. Most the cast is made up ex-inmates from the Thailand prison system. I cannot comment on their line readings in Thai but I always thought them an authentic, powerful force on camera. The only other actor of note is Vithaya Pansringarm (Only God Forgives), who plays the rarely seen prison warden. The real Billy Moore, who wrote the memoir on which the film is based, also has a cameo appearance.
At the heart of A Prayer Before Dawn is a story about overcoming your obstacles and overcoming yourself. Billy finds reason to wake up in the morning when he joins the prison’s boxing team and starts taking lessons from a tough to please coach. Billy also begins a relationship with a transwoman prisoner named Fame, one of the only people in the prison to show him compassion without asking for anything in return. Good days mix with the bad as he has to fight off his addiction while also fighting to improve his boxing skills. Eventually he gets a match that earns him both fans and enemies in the prison.
A Prayer Before Dawn is a pretty good movie – well acted, authentic in a way that you forget you’re watching a dramatization, and it refuses to pull its punches – but it lacks a certain narrative drive. It’s a slow film. And the suffering on top of suffering makes it feel like a long one, too. I wish we had gotten to know Billy more before he got arrested, so that we could’ve known him before he started to lose himself. Was even a good boxer? The only match we saw on the outside was a loss, so I don’t know. He has one Thai friend on the outside that comes to visit him once, but their conversation offer little new information and I do not think we even learn the kid’s name.
Before an all-important bout, Billy begins vomiting blood. He’s told by a doctor that he cannot fight, that his condition is very serious. Of course he ignores this and continues with the boxing match anyway because he needs to win. Maybe this is how it unfolded in real life. But for the movie, it feels like engineered drama rather than earned drama; just one more thing to throw into the mix to make the final fight that much more important and dangerous.
Considering how brutal the drama is, the fights are surprisingly more reserved. Though Joe Cole looks convincing as a kickboxer, the filming style for the matches is to hug the camera so close to the fighters that we barely see the punches and kicks. I guess director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire (Johnny Mad Dog) was simply more interested in Cole’s face than he was his fists. But the result is that none of the fights are very special, except for what they mean to Billy.
A Prayer Before Dawn is a dreary, mean, ugly film. But it achieves a sort of realism that’s not easy to dismiss in cinema. You kinda can’t take your eyes off it. I just wish the film had offered us more reason to get behind Billy as a character. We feel for him – I guess the same way that we feel for a number of the other prisoners who were punished too severely for their crimes – but we never really get to know him beyond his struggles. I won’t dissuade anyone from seeing the film for themselves and making up their own minds, though, because there is something special at work here. It’s just not enough for me to give it my full endorsement.
The first film saw the story of a firefighter (Cha Tae-Hyun) who is taken to the afterlife by three guardians. Once there, he completes in seven trials before he can be reincarnated.
Along with the Gods: The Last 49 Days stars Ha Jung-woo (The Handmaiden), Ju Ji-hoon (Asura: The City of Madness), Kim Hyang-gi (A Werewolf Boy), Lee Jung-jae (Operation Chromite), Ma Dong-Seok (Train to Busan), Kim Dong-Wook (Take Off) and Doh Kyung-soo (My Annoying Brother).
Death Note: Light up the New World | Blu-ray & DVD (Funimation)
RELEASE DATE: January 22, 2019
On January 22, 2019, Funimation will be releasing the Blu-ray + DVD for Death Note: Light up the New World, from director Shinsuke Sato (I Am a Hero).
Delighted by the reign of Kira ten years prior, the God of Death orders his reapers to find a replacement. When six Death Notes are placed on Earth—who will be worthy to take the place of Light Yagami and become the new Kira? With the help of L’s successor, the police begin their fight to stop this new reign of murder and find that the light of justice won’t die so easily.
Director Wych ‘Kaos’ Kaosayananda (Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever) is re-teaming with Kane Kosugi (9 Deaths of the Ninja) for a 3rd time in Maxx.
This upcoming actioner also stars Jason Patric (The Lost Boys), Shogen (Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist), Koichi Iwaki (Memoirs of a Murderer) and Ammy Chanicha (Zero Tolerance).
In Maxx, the best assassin (Kosugi) in the business makes his 500th kill – and decides to retire. Instead, he finds himself involved in a fierce battle of wits with the perfect enemy.
“Big Trouble in Little China” Japanese Theatrical Poster
Back in 2015, it was reported that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was in talks to star in and produce a remake of John Carpenter‘s cult, kung fu-driven, mystical-filled classic Big Trouble in Little China.
As it turns out, the project will actually be a sequel, not a remake. Collider recently spoke with Hiram Garcia, president of production at Seven Bucks Productions (which was founded by co-CEOs Johnson and Dany Garcia) and one of the producers on Big Trouble in Little China, and he had this to say:
“There’s a lot of things going on with Big Trouble in Little China. We are in the process of developing that, and let me tell you, the idea is not to actually remake it. You can’t remake a classic like that, so what we’re planning to do is we’re going to continue the story. We’re going to continue the universe of Big Trouble in Little China. Everything that happened in the original exists and is standalone and I think there’s only one person that could ever play Jack Burton, so Dwayne would never try and play that character. So we are just having a lot of fun. We’re actually in a really great space with the story that we’ve cracked. But yeah, no remake. It is a continuation, and we are deep into development on that as well, and I think you’ll start hearing some things about that probably soon.”
The 1986 film starred Kurt Russell as Jack Burton, a truck driver whose life on the road takes a sudden supernatural tailspin when his best friend’s fiancee is kidnapped. Jack finds himself deep beneath San Francisco’s Chinatown, in a murky, creature-filled world ruled by Lo Pan, a 2000-year-old magician who mercilessly presides over an empire of spirits.
Updates: In a recent interview with Collider, here’s what John Carpenter had to say about the sequel: “They want a movie with Dwayne Johnson. That’s what they want. So, they just picked that title. They don’t give a shit about me and my movie. That movie wasn’t a success. Barry Diller crapped on it.” (On the DVD and Blu-ray commentary of the film, Carpenter remarks that Burton “thinks he’s a whole lot more capable than he is,” with Russell following up this statement with the much more definitive “he’s useless.” With audiences of the 1980s more familiar with macho death machines like John Rambo than the passive goofball that is Jack Burton, the studio began to get nervous, with then-Fox head Barry Diller instructing Carpenter to film the hasty prologue featuring the Egg Shen character telling a lawyer that “we owe Jack Burton everything.” However, once the film begins properly, Burton is still shown to be more baseless bluster than hero, even if evil is defeated in the end. – via DOG)
Until 2008 my interest in Japanese movies had been centred around Kurosawa, and some Anime. I loved Yojimbo, Seven Samurai and Akira, but for some reason I had not burrowed deeper in to the treasure trove of Japanese film. When my local cinema in Edinburgh, Scotland screened a Japanese cult film season, here was my chance. The season was programmed by Matt Palmer, director of recent Netflix original Calibre, my favourite Scottish film in many years. There were 11 movies on in the season, with films such as my favourite horror of all time, Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House, Seijun Suzuki’s psychedelic odyssey Branded to Kill and Kinji Fukasaku’s docu-style Yakuza Graveyard. It was the first one screened that would blow my mind sky high, Kihachi Okamoto’s Sword Of Doom.
“House” Japanese Theatrical Poster
I went in to the screening knowing nothing about film, director or star; I didn’t even realise when watching the film that star Tatsuya Nakadai had been the villain in Yojimbo. As the first few frames unfolded, I was rapt, and it was one of those cinema experiences that I will not only never forget, also one that changed my life. Here was pandoras box opening before my eyes; and the knowledge that this film would remain within my top 5. It still is, ten years later.
Within that first scene Okamoto presents Nakadai’s Ryunosuke as cinema’s ultimate anti-hero, as he kills an old man and leaves the mans granddaughter to mourn, his pleasure in killing so evident. Ryunosuke may be nihilistic, but the film is no exercise in nihilism; as an exploration of violence and psychopathology it is near unmatched, and was a complete break from the earlier Samurai films that focused on honour and the code of Bushido, presenting the Samurai as superhuman. While the film does not plumb the depths of Ryunosuke’s psyche, the portrait is one of a man who lives with his demons close at his side and is obviously a psycopath. One that is fucking fantastic to watch.
The film follows Ryunosuke as he is revealed to be the son of a Master of a swordplay school, who has disgraced the school due to his evil ways. He leaves the school after meeting a young woman Hama (Michiyo Aratama) who he has a child with, and falls in with the Shinsengumi, a a gang run by the Tokugawa shogunate who carry out crimes and assassinations. By chance he accepts a duel when passing a school, only for the student he challenged to go after Ryunosuke as his brother is the man Ryunosuke killed in an earlier match. These disparate narrative threads weave in and out, with the attention on Ryunosuke and his escalating insanity.
“Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance” Japanese Theatrical Poster
The genesis of Sword of Doom is interesting. The film is based on a serialised novel Daibosatsu toge, by acclaimed novelist Kaizan Nakazato, who died before the serial was completed, in 1944. There have been versions of this story by such film makers as Hiroshi Inagaki (Samurai Trilogy) in 1935, Tomu Ichida (Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji) in 1957, and the master Kenji Misumi (Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance) in 1960. This is a story ingrained in the wartime and post-war Japanese collective psyche, one that is originally Buddhist in intention, with the Karma of it’s characters, especially Ryunosuke, expressed throughout the narrative. The screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto was responsible for the scripts for Kurosawa’s classics Rashomon and Seven Samurai, and here his approach to the storyline is very different. It would be interesting to know how much Okamoto diverged from the script, as there are such huge jumps forward wherein the view must fill in the blanks. Hashimoto was an authority on Japanese history, and there are some real historical characters in the movie, such as Toshiro Mifune’s master swordsman Toranosuke Shimada, while Nakadai’s character is a complete work of fiction. The way Okamoto condenses the wealth of storylines in to a single film is a point of contention for those who have watched the film.
“Sword of Doom” Japanese Theatrical Poster
The narrative is fractured and fragmentary; huge jumps in time frames occur, storylines are not resolved and characters come and go. This is partly due to the fact that, like the earlier adaptations of the novel, the film was supposed to the be the first in a trilogy. Another factor that the films champions, such as myself, say is that Okamoto frames the film from Ryunosuke’s subjective view; in terms of film making and narrative. As Ryunosuke slides further and further in to pychosis both aspects reflect this, with the fragmented shards of the story indicative of his muddled and tortured mindset. In the aesthetic aspects some of the most darkly beautiful use of black and white widescreen composition, and impressionistic, complex lighting arrangements combine to create a vision of Ryunosuke’s inner hell.
What use would all of these aspects be without a visual representation of the violent poetry of Ryunosuke’s form as a swordsman? Okamoto presents this in a way which blows my mind, and every time I watch the film the fights become more and more fully formed, in a way that is matchless in Samurai cinema. In fact the film was not successful in Japan (due to factors such as the fact there were already films made about the subject and the strangeness of the storyline), but in the West it was embraced, and became an almost cult classic. This is in no small part due to the swordplay scenes. There are three major battles in the film, and each has their own unique stylistic tics and aesthetic approach.
The first is the most iconic. Ryunosuke has just killed an opponent in a formal match, and the man’s clansmen are setting an ambush for him. He descends a path lined with trees, backlighting creating beautiful patterns of mist. As the men approach and the action begins, it is all shot in a long moving take, with Ryunosuke’s flowing style and unmatched form dispatching each man with a ruthless brilliance. When I first saw this on the big screen my eyes widened in awe, just the same as when I watched Enter the Dragon‘s fight scene with Lee vs Han’s guards. As he walks away, the films most iconic shot, and my favourite in film history, is revealed: the victims of his devils sword in the foreground and Ryunosuke in the background, mist surrounding them. I recently bought a T-shirt with that image on it, and keep getting compliments.
The second features that legend of Japanese cinema, Toshiro Mifune, battling men Ryunosuke is in league with. Mifune’s appearance is a glorified cameo really, and the hoped for battle between the two that would be a rematch from previous films, does not emerge; but again this scene is iconic, wonderfully staged and reveals much about the protagonist. Set in a pathway in a blizzard of snow, Mifune emerges from a palanquin cutting a swath through his enemies with Okamoto using a much more dynamic shooting and editing style, favouring close in angles and quick cuts. Ryunosuke stands and is rendered impotent by Mifune’s way with a sword, and this marks the time he becomes not just a psychopath, but psychotic.
“Hard Boiled” Japanese Theatrical Poster
Come the end of the film Ryunosuke’s descent in to madness has taken hold completely, and he begins to see the Ghosts of his previous victims, attempting to use his sword to drive them away. The film making here is some of the most atmospheric and surreal in all cinema, as he slashes endless corridors of curtains, the ghosts appearing in silhouette. A gang comes in to kill him, and one of the greatest swordfights of all time plays out, with techniques light years ahead of their time utilised, and a heightened sense of violence and gore that is extreme for the time the film was released. One sequence of rapid fire cuts with close ups of maiming and slashing predates Lone Wolf and Cub by 6 years, and longer takes with again a moving camera are magnificently realised.
The feeling of adrenalin as I left the cinema, and a world previously untapped and waiting for exploration was so strong, almost the same as when I watched my favourite film Hard Boiled at age 15. Every aspect of Sword of Doom is is dynamite, but I was haunted by star Tatsuya Nakadai’s performance. In every scene he makes Ryunosuke so hard to read, but those intense eyes burn with a fire that looks beyond the moment. His charisma combined with this makes his depiction my favourite performance in all cinema, and Nakadai has since become my second favourite actor, after Chow Yun Fat. Like Chow, his filmography is so dense its hard to see everything, but Sword of Doom led me to more Okamoto films he starred in like the comic Samurai film Kill!, and one of Nakadai’s last screen performances and Okamoto’s last film before he died, Vengeance for Sale. From there I discovered Masaki Kobayashi’s masterful Hara Kiri and Kwaidan, both starring Nakadai.
Sometimes you don’t know when a film is gonna creep up and bite you in the ass. Sword of Doom did just that to me, and the pain made me open my eyes to the endless possibilities of Japanese cinema. As I write these words I’m thinking about the film I will finish watching next, Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Woman of the Dunes. Having watched half, it is already a masterpiece to me, and having read the book, I know it will just get better. Made in 1964, two years before Sword of Doom, these two are just a couple of examples of the goldmine that stretched on in to the late 70’s. To me, it is doubtful any of the films I have left to watch will match the undying dark beauty at play in Sword of Doom.
You’ve seen The Departed, now see the original! Infernal Affairs is a critically acclaimed crime-thriller that is praised for its gritty action and strong character development (there’s a reason Martin Scorsese remade it!)…
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