Arrow Films Features Japanese Exploitation of the 60s and 70s Japanese Reviews Reviews

Film Review: Tokyo Mighty Guy (1960) by Buichi Saito

A very entertaining film

Nikkatsu, the oldest film studio in Japan, inaugurated a star system in the late 1950s, finding talent and contracting them to a series of wild genre pictures. A prominent example of the tendency is “.”

Young Jiro returns to Tokyo after finishing his studies in French cuisine and opens a restaurant in Ginza. However, he stumbles upon many troubles as an ex-prime minister crashes his car in his restaurant, the Yakuza seems to demand money for protection, and Jiro does not seem able to stop helping everyone that comes across his way.

directs a very entertaining film, which, although focuses on the comic element, it manages to include romance, corruption, crime, social comments and a few impressive, in hilarious fashion, action scenes. However, in order to manage to include all that in the 79 minutes of the film, he implemented a frantic rhythm, with the story progressing without stop with each scene, and the dialogues following the same pace. In the end, though, this pace is what makes the film so easily watchable after all these years (it is a 1960 film), as, along with some musical elements, it functions as a retro music video or a razzmatazz if you wish.

, who was already a superstar in the 60's is the definite protagonist of the film as Jiro, a true mighty guy, with his gorgeous looks, his unparalleled strength, his intellect (he does speak French after all), his kindness and his relentless pursue of justice for everyone who thinks is wronged. The female leads are all gorgeous, headed by and but the one who steals the show is as ex-prime minister Onizaemon Ipponyari, who turns hilarious every scene he appears in, both due to his general appearance and his prowess in comic acting. Probably the best scene of the film, the one with the fighting on the beach, owes much to his presence with a huge bamboo rod.

Technically, the digital transfer of the original Nikkatsu film in Blu-Ray format has created wonders both in image, where the coloring is impressive, and in sound. The aforementioned scene, the introduction, and the last skirmish are definite proofs of the fact.

“Tokyo Mighty Guy” shows its age at many of its aspects and particularly in the nonsensicality of its script, it remains, however, very entertaining due to its pace, funny moments, cast and restoration.

About the author

Panos Kotzathanasis

My name is Panos Kotzathanasis and I am Greek. Being a fan of Asian cinema and especially of Chinese kung fu and Japanese samurai movies since I was a little kid, I cultivated that love during my adolescence, to extend to the whole of SE Asia.

Starting from my own blog in Greek, I then moved on to write for some of the major publications in Greece, and in a number of websites dealing with (Asian) cinema, such as Taste of Cinema, Hancinema, EasternKicks, Chinese Policy Institute, and of course, Asian Movie Pulse. in which I still continue to contribute.

In the beginning of 2017, I launched my own website, Asian Film Vault, which I merged in 2018 with Asian Movie Pulse, creating the most complete website about the Asian movie industry, as it deals with almost every country from East and South Asia, and definitely all genres.

You can follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

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