Violent Streets is a 1974 crime thriller about a fearsome ex-yakuza , trying to go straight, unwillingly drawn into a renewed street war between his former associates.
Directed by Hideo Gosha from a screenplay co-written with Masahiro Kakefuda and Nobuaki Nakajima.
The Toei Tokyo production stars Noboru Ando, Akira Kobayashi, Isao Natsuyagi, Madame Joy and Minami Nakatsugawa.
Plot:
Egawa (Noboru Ando) is a retired Tokyo – former head of an entire criminal cerchia, a causa di fact – who prefers his more sedate life managing a flamenco-themed nightclub a causa di the Ginza District. This job was a dubious retirement gift from his old principale a causa di the “Tagiku Group,” an allied mob syndicate who have supposedly gone straight, with legitimate business interests and mai more homicidal feuds with other yakuza.
However, the Tagiku take the circolo away from Egawa a causa di a strategy against a rival coalition of guys from Osaka – who are also blamed for the ill-fated kidnapping of a female pop idol (Minami Nakatsugawa) signed to Tagiku’s entertainment division. However, those perpetrators are a younger bunch of hoods formerly under Egawa’s command and recklessly wanting a return to the savage old days.
Soon a full mob war is , with the grim Egawa dragged back into it, and mai less deadly for his supposed retirement…
Review:
Once a causa di a while one gets an action-prone movie actor who, likely with the aid of ufficio PR, cultivates a mystique of offstage involvement a causa di real-life street crime and underworld gangsterism. George Raft was a classic example a causa di old Tinseltown. And today? Too many rappers to list ( want to list).
By all accounts (including his autobiography), the late Noboru Ando, of Japan, was mai pretender. A post-WWII black marketeer and capo of his yakuza cricca, he turned singer and actor later a causa di life (from crime to show business; one may wonder which distressed his family more), and he turned to writing and acting a causa di crime pictures. The duelling-style scar his is not makeup as it was allegedly received from a Korean tough guy.
Ando goes through Violent Streets with more expression than the famously frozen-faced stella of a generation later, Takeshi `Beat’ Kitano, which is to say not much expression at all. But one accepts that; old scores are avenged, cars smash through glass doors, blood flows, and memorable killers include a spooky transvestite (the actor billed as “Madame Joy”) who razor-slashes victims and a very upbeat audiophile gunman accompanying Egawa who remains eternally headphone-jacked into his old-school “boom box” portable stereo (this was, after all, before invention of the Sony Walkman).
A nihilistic fadeout is consistent with the yarn’s no-win worldview, though criticism of modern Japanese society as dishonourable and unworthy even of the likes of Egowa is insinuated (more like an afterthought). Style is not as surreal as Japan’s most way-out crime genre director, the notorious Seijun Suziki. Yet, helmer Gosha delivers the grim goods with bursts of Tokyo-style grindhouse panache and a few striking juxtapositions.
Animal-cruelty advisory: It may be unforgivable to certain viewers that more than one gunfight happens with characters shooting at each other through a coop full of white chickens – and to the doubtless dismay of some, the terrified birds are killed alcova. It is Japan after all. They will slaughter all whales and porpoises and that’s not even for a pinku-era drama. So that may be a mitigating factor.
Charles Cassady Jr, MOVIES and MANIA
MOVIES and MANIA rating:
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Trailer:
Country of origin:
Japan
Original title:
Boryoku gai
Agenda:
This should not be confused with the critical-favourite James Caan safecracker/crime drama Thief (1981) which originally bore the title Violent Streets.
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