In the last decade, there has been a flourishing of films in which ageing heroes demonstrate that there is more than petanque and bingo in post-retirement life. Franchises like “Red” and “The Expendables” satisfy the collective desire to stay active and fit and never get old, and are also a vehicle for recycling old and beloved stars. But Kitano's old bad guys of his “Ryuzo and the Seven Henchmen” are more “amiable losers” than their Hollywood heroic counterparts.
Ryuzo (Tatsuya Fuji, an old glory of Japanese cinema, protagonist among many others, of “In the Realm of the Senses”, “Empire of Passion” and “Bright Future”) is a non-affective grandfather, with a turbulent past as a member of a Yakuza “family” who is not ready yet to stay calm and sit on an armchair. When not terrorizing the children of the neighborhood and insulting his daughter-in-law, Ryuzo spends his time wearing a “wife-beater” vest showing off his gang tattoos in plain sight and training with the bokken (the wooden katana) under the annoyed eyes of his son, an ordinary, honest salaryman, who is quite ashamed of his paternal history of violence. Left on his own to look after the house for a week, Ryuzo is targeted by petty crooks who try to extort money from him by posing as his son's colleagues (a common scam targeting seniors). All ends up comically and without consequences, however, the episode gives Ryuzo and his old liutenant and friend Masa (Masaomi Kondo) the opportunity to reflect on the clumsy underworld of modern days that acts without brains and, above all, without the code of honor, so essential for the old school yakuza.
Consequently, they decide to put their gang back together, forcing out old friends from hospitals and retirement homes. Like in the old times when they were boys, they settle and camp all together in Masa's apartment and begin to tease the new generations of gangsters with hilarious consequences. Each one of Ryuzo's henchmen have a nickname from the specialty in which he excels (or excelled, I should say). There's Cane Man, 6-Inch Nail, Razor Slasher (but don't ask him to shave), Kamikaze, Mac (from Steve McQueen) the only one who owns a gun that brandishes with shaking hands, and there's even Toilet Assassin. Takeshi Kitano himself briefly appears a couple of times in a cameo as a policeman – funnily reminiscent of Lieutenant Columbo – who turns a blind eye every now and then, having also played cops and robbers with them in the glorious old days.
After the bleak “Outrage” and “Outrage Beyond”, Takeshi Kitano returns to a lighter tone with “Ryuzo and the Seven Henchmen”, a film pervaded by a down-to-earth humor that pays an affectionate homage to old gangster film era, when honor and dedication were more important than greed and Internet. The film utilises typical gags of the classic comedy, such as the lover locked in the bathroom, grotesque disguises, a bit of slapstick, a bit of toilet humour and so on, and it is strongly nostalgic for an old, “pure” Yakuza. As arguably as it can be the concept of a “good Yakuza”, it fondly remembers and honours the old gangster movies by showing that they had more human stories and were less dominated by technology and special effects. As an eye-candy, the glorious past actions that earned the gang members their nicknames are illustrated through a series of very enjoyable flashbacks, shot in black and white emulating old Japanese Yakuza movies.
I had a great desire to like it and I had fun watching it, but in all honesty, it is slightly disappointing. “Ryuzo and the Seven Henchmen” is a series of funny vignettes that are too weakly intertwined to create an accomplished film, as if, sadly, the parts are better than their whole. Thinking about it, it would work well as a TV series, the kind with short, 20-minute episodes; as a film, however, it remains somehow suspended in the air and eventually, it leaves a feeling of incompleteness. Some brownie points, nevertheless, are earned for the jolly spirit of the gags and, above all, for the protagonists, who you cannot help but love.
As Ryuzo puts it in a daring comparison: “The Yakuza is like baseball. It's fun to play but very sad when you stop”. Maybe Kitano was trying to tell us that he is afraid of retiring.
