{"id":16246,"date":"2017-06-30T02:27:06","date_gmt":"2017-06-30T06:27:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=16246"},"modified":"2017-06-30T10:16:38","modified_gmt":"2017-06-30T14:16:38","slug":"ken-takakura-and-brutal-tales-of-the-yakuza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=16246","title":{"rendered":"Ken Takakura and Brutal Tales of The Yakuza"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I had to put reviews on pause as this past weekend saw the Canadian + Toronto premiere of my doc BSV 1172 <\/strong>plus some video work, but next week I\u2019ll have a podcast with some audio from the Q&A and other thoughts of the micro Eye Myth Cine-Gallery<\/a> experimental film festival.<\/p>\n

First up is a pair of yakuza dramas starring Ken Takakura, an amazing talent sometimes characterized as Japan\u2019s Steve McQueen, which is really a lazy description for an actor who has his own distinct screen persona.<\/p>\n

In Bullet Train<\/a> <\/strong>(1975), he made a bomber sympathetic as a man driven to commit an act of desperation after being left behind by the country\u2019s economic gold rush, and in Brutal Tales of Chivalry \/ Sh\u00f4wa zanky\u00f4-den<\/a><\/strong> (1965), released on Blu by Twilight Time, he\u2019s a reformed pacifist ultimately forced to pick up his sword and save his yakuza clan from economic ruin and social annihilation.<\/p>\n

When Sidney Pollack was casting The Yakuza<\/a> <\/strong>(1974), new on Blu from Warner Archives, Takakura was a perfect choice to co-star with Robert Mitchum in Paul Schrader\u2019s first produced screenplay. It\u2019s also the most atypical Hollywood action film shot on location in Japan for reasons I detail in my review.<\/p>\n

In watching Pollack\u2019s film and observing the characters tied to a dark secret, I couldn\u2019t help feeling a little bit of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu, and didn\u2019t realize until the review\u2019s near-completion that Takakura also played the Japanese counterpart to the U.S. detective sent to Japan in Ridley Scott\u2019s bombastic Black Rain<\/strong> (1989). There are some striking similarities between the two films, but they\u2019re very different animals, and as Pollack explains in his commentary track (ported over from the 2007 Yakuza<\/strong> DVD), the films of the 1970s were unique because there were no rules, and Hollywood was desperate to find a formula that clicked with audiences unresponsive to classic studio genre productions.<\/p>\n

The Yakuza<\/strong> is slow and really a drama about differing cultures, whereas Black Rain<\/strong> is vintage boneheaded 1980s action. I don\u2019t hate the latter, but one need only compare each film\u2019s score: Dave Grusin\u2019s Yakuza<\/strong> score is intimate, lush only in evoking a fleeting romance, and somewhat abstract in dramatic scenes; Hans Zimmer takes the might of orchestra and powerful synths and bombards the audience with heavy bass, massive percussion, and a romantic theme that hasn\u2019t aged especially well.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll still watch and enjoy Scott\u2019s film for a laugh, but Pollack\u2019s drama is sophisticated, understated, and lets its characters breathe. It\u2019s also the perfect intro for western audiences to Japan\u2019s own yakuza genre, because its script explains genre aspects one is expected to already know in dramas like Brutal Tales of Chivalry<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Coming next: <\/em>reviews of the theatrical + hardcore edition of I Dream of Wires<\/strong> (2014), a superb documentary on modular synths by Robert Fantinatto and Jason Amm, and Gary Numan: Android in La La Land<\/strong> (2016).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mark R. Hasan<\/strong>, Editor
\nKQEK.com<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviews of two new Blu-rays starring Japan’s inimitable Ken Takakura: Brutal Tales of Chivalry \/ Sh\u00f4wa zanky\u00f4-den (1965) from Twilight Time + The Yakuza (1974) from Warner Archives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16248,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[5174,2562,2563,4865,5175,2556,5176],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/KenTakakura_featured.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-4e2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16246"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16246"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16260,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16246\/revisions\/16260"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}