Review of Tokyo Drifter (1966) by Nate A — 07 Oct 2011

My first go at Suzuki, and I liked it a lot. It would seem the films coming out of the Nikkatsu studio shared the same philosophy as the spaghetti westerns and gialli pictures that were being made around the same time in Italy: "We don't care how you make it, but make it fast, make it cheap, and be sure to turn a profit".

Yakuza films being very in vogue at the time, that's what we get here: a yakuza film. The plot? It's ok. You have your typical archetypes and the narrative is easy to follow. But everything else just oozes style, cool, and charisma. It jumps around in style a lot, from noir to western to comedy to bloody gangster film. There's even a good mix of surrealism in there. But somehow it all works, although I'm sure some people will find this disjointed and annoying.

What could have been a dull, plodding, cliche gangster picture is instead, a beautiful snapshot of the outlaw 60's in Japan.