Violent Streets is a 1974 crime thriller film about a fearsome ex-yakuza gangster, 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 gangster – former head of an entire criminal clan, in fact – who prefers his more sedate life managing a flamenco-themed nightclub in the Ginza District. This job was a dubious retirement gift from his old boss in the “Tagiku Group,” an allied mob syndicate who have supposedly gone straight, with legitimate business interests and no more homicidal feuds with other yakuza.
However, the Tagiku take the club away from Egawa in a strategy against a rival coalition of hard 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 on, with the grim Egawa dragged back into it, and no less deadly for his supposed retirement…
Review:
Once in a while one gets an action-prone movie actor who, likely with the aid of studio PR, cultivates a mystique of offstage involvement in real-life street crime and underworld gangsterism. George Raft was a classic example in old Tinseltown. And today? There are too many rappers to list (or want to list).
By all accounts (including his autobiography), the late Noboru Ando, of Japan, was no pretender. A post-WWII black marketeer and leader of his yakuza gang, he turned singer and actor later in life (from crime to show business; one may wonder which distressed his family more), and he turned to writing and acting in crime pictures. The duelling-style scar on his face is not makeup as it was allegedly received from a tough Korean guy.
Ando goes through Violent Streets with more expression than the famously frozen-faced star of a generation later, Takeshi `Beat’ Kitano, which is 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 Suzuki. 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 on camera. It is Japan after all. They will slaughter all whales and porpoises and that’s not even for a pinku-era gangster drama. So that may be a mitigating factor.
Charles Cassady Jr
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Trailer:
Country of origin:
Japan
Original title:
Boryoku gai
Notes:
This film 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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