by Fred Barrett
Released during Nikkatsu's golden age, “Cruel Gun Story” is a gritty action thriller in the vein of similar noir-inspired Nikkatsu productions of the era like “Rusty Knife”, “Take Aim at the Police Van” or “A Colt Is My Passport”.
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After serving time in prison for killing the truck driver responsible for confining his sister to a wheelchair, Togawa (Joe Shishido) is granted an early release, arranged by a wealthy Yakuza boss. His release, however, comes with a catch: he is coerced into organizing and carrying out a heist on an armored truck carrying 127 million yen, with the promise of being able to afford surgery which would enable his sister to walk again. Hesitantly, Togawa agrees and, after testing them through various means, assembles a crew to carry out the robbery. While things go smoothly at first, the plan soon falls apart and Togawa must find a way to stay alive amidst an onslaught of lies, deception and double-crosses.
This Japanese riff on Stanley Kubrick's “The Killing” tells its story of a crime gone awry through moody Japanoir atmospherics. The world of gangsters, crooks and junkies is rendered appropriately sleazy and violent, with several friends betrayed, punches thrown, guns fired and sticks of dynamite exploded throughout the brief runtime. Just as fittingly, the film's view on loyalty and redemption is a bleak one. Loyalty is at best a remnant of a bygone pre-WWII era and at worst, a way to an early grave while redemption remains perpetually out of reach. For all his tough-guy posturing, Togawa is a deeply loyal, to some extent even kind-hearted thug, motivated more by love for his sister than hatred for anyone else. But in the new world, his loyalty is a weakness and any attempt at redemption a waste of time.
Behind this new world stands the American presence in Japan, usually slipping by unnoticed but occasionally brought to the fore through images of American fighter jets shooting through the sky or when the gang is forced to hide out in an abandoned warehouse, left behind by US troops once they got done celebrating the end of the war. The post-war economic boom brought with it a progress not everyone managed to adapt to and it is this progress, this modernity that Togawa struggles to find his place in, an age where greed and blind ambition have been made into virtues, and progress must come at all costs.
This grim outlook is augmented by a commendable lead performance courtesy of Joe Shishido, who imbues the macho Togawa with enough vulnerability and inner conflict to make him a decently intriguing protagonist, a character that could've easily been a silly cool-guy mobster caricature. Even though his moral compass is less than intact, his motives remain believable and certainly relatable and ultimately, he is just as much a victim of circumstance as he is a victim of his own decisions, something Shishido's performance highlights, walking a razor's edge between the controlled level-headedness of a leader and the desperate fumbling of a small-time hoodlum.
As a take on film noir, “Cruel Gun Story” has style for days, from the dingy rooms where schemes are hatched, to the trench coat-clad, sunglasses-wearing antihero at the center of the narrative. The tense main heist sequence even plays out twice, once as Togawa lays it out and once as it actually occurs which is a fantastic bit of deceptive editing work. But even with its strong underworld atmosphere and explosive moments of action, the film ultimately gets weighed down by a few too many twists, a bizarre, clumsy ending that does the already thin plot no favors and broad homage to Western cinema that clashes heavily with its themes. An entertaining but forgettable entry into the canon of Japanese crime cinema.
