It's been a busy couple weeks, and unfortunately, the preoccupied knife sliced through those extra fatty hours, which were then tossed to the ravenous dogs. That time, reserved for strategic enjoyment, better known as, MOVIE WATCHING, chowed down upon by life.
What does this all mean man! It means I could only get through a few films.
1. Yakuza Papers - Deadly Fight in Hiroshima - Kinji Fukasaku
2. Yakuza Papers - Proxy War - Kinji Fukasaku
3. Yakuza Papers - Police Tactics - Kinji Fukasaku
4. Yakuza Papers - Final Episode - Kinji Fukasaku
Boy oh boy, what a goddamn cool experience this is. I had seen Battles Without Honor and Humanity several years ago, and then re-watched(yes, this is a word) it a couple weeks back. But I had never gone through the whole series.
This is filmmaking so cool, that no matter how fucking hard Western cinema tries to appropriate it's style, the real thing is always, always better, more interesting and certainly, original. Straight from the source baby. I don't give a goddamn what your budget is, or how many VFX you can stuff in a scene, this shit is just straight up cooler. The end. Argument over.
Although, I am well aware that "cool" was not the intention as this is not a glorification piece, but a social critique. Unfortunately, that is an absolute impossibility as far as cinema and gangsters are concerned. Crime always pays.
Also, as it's an unbending, pure piece of genre work, you can be critical of many elements of it if you are a bore, but what's the purpose of that? You are a bore. Let it go. I'm done debating.
Go see this series. This is the definitive Yakuza set and a testament to how modern Japanese cinema was.
