Outlaw: Gangster VIP
Burai yori daikanbu
Director ~ Toshio Masuda
Writers ~ Goro Fujita, Kaneo Ikegami, Keiji Kubota
1968, Japan
Stars ~ Tetsuya Watari, Chieko Matsubara, Mitsuo Hamada
This is exactly as you would expect a yakuza yarn to be. Like many gangster melodramas, it’s told with equal levels of violence and sentimentality. The patriarchy and misogyny are strong but without reflection: good girls like bad boys.
The theme song asks, “Why does a yakuza have a lonely heart?”, and this signifies the centre of intent as romanticising the gangster’s self-pity. As Gorô Fujikawa, Tetsuya Watari has undeniable presence, the reluctant bad-ass, exceeding in a world of criminality where his chilly reserve mitigates his violent behaviour. Or as Clayton Dillard writes, Gorô’s “entire mission throughout these films seeks a seemingly irreconcilable harmony between traumatized mind and vengeful body.” He’s an antihero born into tragedy and deprivation, just as likely to slap or denigrate his love interest as make Poor Me Tortured Soul eyes. But it’s when his friend is murdered that he really loses his cool, for fraternity in a gangster’s world is paramount.
Punctuated by stabby chaotic rough-and-tumble fight scenes that provide a through-line from Kurosawa’s ‘Yojimbo’ to Kinji Fukasaku’s ‘Battles Without Honour and Humanity’ series: fights are both sloppy and brutal. These are the highlights where the aesthetic comes truly alive, exceeds the criminal class soap operatics. Bookended by a nicely shot back-and-white opening poverty flashback and a final stylised fight under a lounge singer’s song that leaves you feeling that much else in-between has been coasting.
OUTLAW: GANGSTER VIP 2
Daikanbu: Burai
Director ~ Keiichi Ozawa
Writers ~ Goro Fujita, Kaneo Ikegami, Keiji Kubota
1968, Japan
Stars ~ Tetsuya Watari, Chieko Matsubara, Ryôhei Uchida
Gangstering guys and weeping women, the sequel is a tracing over its predecessor with slightly less style. Carrying on from the original (no: he didn’t die), it won’t be a minute off the train before Gorô (Watari) is facing off against local thugs to rescue vulnerable women.
Made hot on the heels of the original in 1968, but Ozawa doesn’t have the same occasional flare as Masuda, despite the initial snowy setting and appealing Sixties colour. But it does have a few engaging knife fights that sprawl and cumbersomely scrap their way through backstreets to resolution – again, it’s not so much skill as plunging headfirst in, determination then desperation that gets you through. There is almost a melancholy to the fight scenes rather than excitement, and it is this that distinguishes the violence of the first two films. There is no doubt that Gorô will kick ass, but it is less than celebratory.
Again, the sequel is in service to melodrama rather than insight. As an antihero, Gorô is as much a misogynist git as a sad sack psychopath, posing leather jacket cool and ready to plunge into a death wish for vengeance. Watari has the screen magnetism to hold it all together between the fight scenes even if the romance and yakuza politics is broad strokes undemanding and rudimentary.
