It’s been weeks since the last time I had a change to watch a movie (I think)? Where was I… oh, yeah, in the middle of the Nikkatsu Noir box set.
This one doesn’t start off in a promising manner — it kinda looks like a pastiche of American movies of the late 40s?
But the hero is a guy who looks like a chipmunk.
Did they stuff his cheeks with cotton?
What with the cotton swabs in his cheeks and the shades — is the actor part of a witness protection programme?
When I was a boy Joe Shishido debuted playing a sensitive handsome young man in 1955. Next year he had a plastic surgery and made his cheek richer.
So it’s not cotton swabs — it’s a horrid plastic surgery. He looks like he has a permanent abscessed tooth.
Finally!
This is a sort of… deconstructed heist movie? I mean, it’s totally a traditional American heist movie, but it has a heightened absurdity going on? Or perhaps they just don’t quite get things right? It’s pretty amusing anyway.
Or perhaps it’s just sloppy.
Hasn’t this bar been in a bunch of other movies?
I’m just not gripped by this thing. The storyline kinda disintegrates, and there’s scenes that are just… odd? But I may have missed something, as my attention was flagging in some parts.
But it looks kinda stylish, at least. And the final scene is masterful.
Cruel Gun Story. Takumi Furukawa. 1964.
This blog post is part of the Eclipse series.