Obscure Japanese Film #108
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Izumi Ashikawa and Yuji Odaka in foreground
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Saburo (Yuji Odaka) is
a young Tokyo garage mechanic who has been working hard and saving diligently
for three years in order to buy a car and get married. His fiancée, Toshie
(Izumi Ashikawa), is a nurse in Niigata. Feeling full of himself, Saburo drives
through the night in his new car to join her, and passes through a village
where someone has just been murdered in the course of a burglary. This bad timing leads to him being pulled over and arrested by ambitious local cop Moriyama (Hiroyuki Nagato).
Unfortunately, Saburo's luck takes a further turn for the worse when he’s taken to
the scene of the crime and identified as the culprit by the murdered man’s wife
(Mrs Koreya Senda, Teruko Kishi), who is still suffering from concussion.
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Hiroyuki Nagato
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Although it seems that
Saburo will be the protagonist of the story, he largely disappears once he gets
thrown in jail, and the focus shifts onto Moriyama, who turns out to have a
little more depth than we first suspect. (This is good news for the viewer as he’s a more
interesting character, and Hiroyuki Nagato – perhaps best known for playing the
lead in Pigs and Battleships – is also
a more interesting actor.) However, Moriyuma’s colleagues are less sensitive
individuals and it’s not the first Japanese film I’ve seen in which most of the
cops are more interested in saving face than getting the right man. It’s even
implied they would lose their jobs if found to have made a mistake. Does this
reflect reality or is it dramatic license? I’m not sure. In any case, the
apparently simple story goes off in some unexpected directions, with Moriyama
making a trip all the way to Sado island at one point to see Sakiko (Misako
Watanabe), a woman for whom he seems to have had romantic feelings, but who has
eloped with a labourer (Shigeru Koyama in an early appearance).
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Misako Watanabe
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Working from an
original screenplay by the unstoppable Kaneto Shindo, director Ko Nakahira pulls
off an excellent chase sequence involving a train and, while the film’s finale
is not much of a surprise, also manages to avoid a clichéd ending, making it far
more memorable than it might have been.
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Ko Nishimura and Izumi Ashikawa
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A Nikkatsu production, the film also
benefits from an effective music score by Akira Ifukube and the stylish noir
camerawork of Shinsaku Himeda, as well as a strong supporting cast which
includes Ko Nishimura as Moriyama’s boss, Kinzo Shin as a judge and Hideji
Otaki in a tiny role.
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Ko Nishimura and Hiroyuki Nagato
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