“The Sleeping Beast Within” Japanese Theatrical Poster
Director: Seijun Suzuki
Writer: Ichiro Ikeda
Cast: Hiroyuki Nagato, Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Shinsuke Ashida, Kinzo Shin, Kojiro Kusanagi, Keisuke Noro, Hisano Yamaoka, Ko Nishimura, Shoichi Ozawa
Running Time: 85 min.
By Kelly Warner
After two years away on business, Mr. Ueki returns home on a ship from Hong Kong to meet his family at the Yokohama pier. None of his business partners are there to meet him and the family thinks this suspicious. After a day of catching up with his loved ones, Mr. Ueki receives a phone call to meet his business partners about the next job and takes off for a night of drinking. Then he doesn’t come home. Curious, after two years apart to now have her father disappear in the night, the man’s daughter Keiko (Kazuko Yoshiyuki) goes off in search for him the next day only to find a mystery awaiting her.
The Sleeping Beast Within is straight up Hitchcockian. There’s a missing man, a murder mystery, a drug trade, a scarred villain, and a religious cult that operates in the shadows. It’s a lot of movie for 87 minutes and it is one much more interested in plot than character development. Joining Keiko on her search for Papa Ueki is her boyfriend, the investigative journalist Shotaro (Hiroyuki Nagato). At first I found the reporter rather dull, because he essentially acts as the audience’s eye, peering into shadows, looking for clues. But things get more interesting the more he learns, as he begins to question whether he must draw a line between helping Keiko and writing a truthful story even if it wounds her.
What makes The Sleeping Beast Within a fun mystery movie is that it solves is central question fairly early and that only deepens the mystery at the film’s core. Papa Ueki, who had dropped clues for his family on the night of his disappearance, suddenly just shows up one day like there was nothing wrong. He laughs at his family for ever thinking something sinister was afoot and assures them that he only disappeared on a drunken whim. But Shotaro, invited into this by the girl he loves, senses there’s more to the story and keeps digging, ultimately shining a spotlight on Papa Ueki that doesn’t make the man look very good, and in turn draws conflicted emotions out of Keiko.
Director Seijun Suzuki (Eight Hours of Terror) and writer Ichiro Ikeda (Red Pier) make their mystery all the more interesting by having these dark discoveries play out with normal, suburbanite people. The plot plays like Hitchcock, but the themes of darkness visited upon the ordinary remind one of David Lynch. It’s unpredictable, yet never feels overly contrived (a religious cult in the plot is kind of goofy but even this has a satisfying conclusion).
I enjoyed time with the daughter Keiko far more than the reporter Shotaro. Kazuko Yoshiyuki (Departures) is very good at selling her conflicted emotions about her father. This is one of her earliest roles. She would go onto become one of Japan’s most popular veteran actresses. Hiroyuki Nagato (Shinjuku Incident) is good as Shotaro but he has less to work with in the more passive hero role. Shinsuke Ashida (Red Angel) as Papa Ueki may remind modern viewers of a certain father from a certain AMC series about a man in the drug trade.
Shot in beautiful noirish black and white and scripted without a dull moment, The Sleeping Beast Within is a perfectly entertaining mystery movie about the people we think we know and the dangerous webs we didn’t know we were caught in just by knowing them. Fans of Suzuki’s action movies may not find what they’re looking for here but those in the mood for a classic thriller won’t be disappointed.
Kelly Warner’s Rating: 7/10
