By Thomas M. Puhr.
Light on their feet but not rushed, fun but not goofy, these films deliver just about everything you’d want from the hitman genre….”
In 1967, Japanese director Kazuo Mori released back-to-back actioners starring Raizô Ichikawa as the archetypal hitman. Coldblooded, principled, calm under pressure—and often seen sporting a crisp suit, with a cigarette in hand—he’s the kind of guy who could spout eminently cool lines like “I’ve never killed anyone for free before, but I’ll make an exception for you” before blowing away an enemy, or walk away from a lost fortune with little more than a fatalistic shrug. These films, produced by the prolific Daiei studios and now rereleased by Arrow Video in a limited edition collector’s set, may be something of a revelation to viewers who have worn out their Criterion editions of Le samouraï or wondered about the cinematic ancestors of Ryan Gosling’s and Ryan O’Neal’s Drivers. This type of character may have been done to death, but Mori’s entries in the genre exude a quirky charm all their own.
The first, A Certain Killer (see top image), opens with our (anti)hero—who goes by the name Shiozawa and lives by day as a nondescript restauranteur—booking a room in a remote tenement overlooking a cemetery. Naturally, he’s there to do some recon for his next job, the specifics of which remain cloaked in mystery until a final act that neatly ties it all together. In due time, Shiozawa is joined by two accomplices, the fast-talking Keiko (Yumiko Nogawa) and ingratiating Maeda (Mikio Narita). Surprisingly, the film consists largely of flashbacks once the three meet at the tenement; through this clever narrative framework, we learn how Shiozawa met his comrades (for example, he saved Keiko from her violent pimp and later took her under his wing), witness him plying his craft (a beautiful set piece at a concert shows him stealthily taking down the target of a local yakuza gang), and discover that his latest mission may be a setup. A climax set in the aforementioned cemetery features not only the requisite gunplay and hand-to-hand combat but also some cheeky humor (part of the mission involves smuggled cocaine being transported in baby powder containers).
Though A Certain Killer is far from a slow burn—its crisp 82 minutes fly by—Shiozawa’s next adventure, A Killer’s Key, moves at even more of a breakneck speed. Slightly shorter than its predecessor, the follow-up observes the go-to action sequel formula of streamlining the plot, focusing less on character, and upping the explosions and body count. It’s a blast. This time, our protagonist—now going by the name “Nitta”—is pulled out of his quiet life as a dance instructor to take down Asakura (Asao Uchida), a loan shark. After he’s double-crossed and left for dead by the men who hired him, Nitta works (that is, kills) his way up the criminal underworld food chain. Foregoing the original’s narrative playfulness, A Killer’s Key becomes a fairly straightforward, linear revenge tale, and none of the bad guys—from small time crooks to a wealthy construction CEO named Endo (Kô Nishimura)—are given much to do besides get their asses kicked. The most complicated character is Nitta’s new female counterpart: Hideko (Tomomi Satô), a geisha torn between her financial dependence on Endo and romantic interest in Nitta. (Simmering beneath both films is a fascinating, if tonally inconsistent, commentary on women who are judged for making the most of the societal hands they’ve been dealt.)
Some stylistic flourishes (quick zooms, freeze frames, acrylic-pouring style opening credits that play like a psychedelic riff on a James Bond opening) are very much of their time, but Mori’s direction is mostly tight and unfussy….”
Based on works by novelist Shinji Fujiwara, A Certain Killer and A Killer’s Key would make for a perfectly enjoyable action double feature (not a tall order; if you watch them back-to-back, the experience would still be a few minutes shorter than Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One). Some stylistic flourishes (quick zooms, freeze frames, acrylic-pouring style opening credits that play like a psychedelic riff on a James Bond opening) are very much of their time, but Mori’s direction is mostly tight and unfussy (his wide-angle shots of spare interiors—be they business offices or tenement rooms—look fantastic on the new Blu-ray). It’s a fitting visual style, given that Shiozawa’s preferred method of dispatching with a target—deployed with a quiet, ruthless efficiency—is to sneak up behind them and jab a shiny silver needle into the back of their neck. Also lending the films cohesion is Hajime Kaburagi’s theme song; its simple, sleek (and very catchy) guitar and harpsichord nicely complement Shiozawa’s unwavering composure in the face of danger.
The Arrow release comes loaded with special features, including two audio commentaries by artist and critic Tony Rayns and a thirty-minute conversation with Japanese film scholar Mark Roberts. As I made my way through these features, I was consistently struck by just how prolific many of these artists were during the postwar years. Some of the stats Rayns and Roberts share are staggering: Mori, according to Roberts, directed more than 130 features, the Shiozawa adventures being outliers in an oeuvre dominated by period pieces; and the beloved Ichikawa, despite having died of cancer at thirty-seven, managed to appear in more than 150 (30 being collaborations with Mori). I did a double-take when Rayns, at the beginning of his A Killer’s Key commentary, noted how the sequel was released a mere four months after A Certain Killer’s success. These films were produced with a focused precision befitting a hitman; it’s hard to square the speed with which they were produced with their exceptional quality.
But Rayns and Roberts are not just interested in rattling off fun facts; the latter’s fascinating talk, for example, breaks down Yasuzô Masumura’s theories on what makes for a good literary adaptation (“disassemble” a novel’s complex structure, home in on a core theme and character, find ways to “objectify” the author’s rendering of subjective thoughts and feelings, reassemble accordingly) and situates these two films within the hitman genre’s 1960s heyday, both in Japan (Nomura’s A Colt is My Passport, Suzuki’s Branded to Kill) and abroad (Le samouraï, of course, but also Bogdanovich’s Targets).
Light on their feet but not rushed, fun but not goofy, these films deliver just about everything you’d want from the genre: efficient, visually coherent action (those seeking ultraviolence, however, should look elsewhere); love interests who are sexy and complex; a nice twist every ten minutes or so; and, most importantly, a cool antihero who manages to feel like both a superhuman and everyman. It’s too bad Mori and company didn’t continue the series; I would have happily followed Shiozawa on more adventures.
Thomas M. Puhr lives in Chicago, where he teaches English and language arts. A regular contributor to Bright Lights Film Journal, he has published Fate in Film: A Deterministic Approach to Cinema with Wallflower Press.