"Actor: Isao Tamagawa"

• Branded to Kill | Blu Ray | (18/08/2014) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Seijun Suzuki's absolutely mad yakuza movie Branded to Kill bends the hit-man genre so out-of-shape it more resembles a Luis Bunuel take on Martin Scorsese. Number Three killer Goro Hanada (Jo Shishido) is a hired gun who loves his work, but when he misses a target after a mere butterfly sets his carefully balanced aim astray, he becomes the next target of the mob. Goro is no pushover and easily dispatches the first comers, leaving them splayed in death contortions that could qualify for an Olympic event, but the rat-a-tat violence gives way to a surreal, sadistic game of cat and mouse. The legendary Number One mercilessly taunts his target before moving in with him in a macho, testosterone-laden Odd Couple truce that ends up with them handcuffed together. Kinky? Not compared to earlier scenes. The smell of boiling rice sets Goro's libido for his mistress so aflame that Suzuki censors the gymnastic sex with animated black bars that come to life in an animated cha-cha. Because Suzuki pushed his yakuza parodies and cinematic surrealism too far, his studio, Nikkatsu, finally called in their own metaphoric hit and fired the director with such force that he was effectively blackballed from the industry for a decade. It took about that long for audiences to embrace his audacious genre bending--Suzuki's pop-art sensibilities were just a bit ahead of their time. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com

• Branded To Kill | DVD | (26/02/2007) from £10.78   |  Saving you £9.21 (46.10%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Generally agreed upon to be Suzuki's finest work the film charts the progress of 'Number 3 Killer' Hanado an ice-cool Japanese hitman who get more than he bargained for when he agrees to make a hit for a beautiful girl. On the run and in danger from all sides Hanado must ultimately face the 'No.1 Killer'... A surreal and stunning fusion of '60's pop-aesthetic yakuza thriller raucous sex perverse desires staggering violence and delirious nightmare Branded To Kill is a unique thriller and a towering work of Art. Nikkatsu the studio that financed the film found the film was so intense and incomprehensible that Suzuki was immediately fired! Today it is regarded as his masterpiece.

• Gate Of Flesh | DVD | (14/06/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Set in Tokyo just after the war 'Gate of Flesh' is the story of a group of prostitutes who live and work in a derelict building. Now recognised as a classic of Japanese cinema the film is a shocking sometimes brutal yet always compelling experience.

• Branded To Kill | DVD | (25/02/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Seijun Suzuki's absolutely mad yakuza movie Branded to Kill bends the hit-man genre so out-of-shape it more resembles a Luis Bunuel take on Martin Scorsese. Number Three killer Goro Hanada (Jo Shishido) is a hired gun who loves his work, but when he misses a target after a mere butterfly sets his carefully balanced aim astray, he becomes the next target of the mob. Goro is no pushover and easily dispatches the first comers, leaving them splayed in death contortions that could qualify for an Olympic event, but the rat-a-tat violence gives way to a surreal, sadistic game of cat and mouse. The legendary Number One mercilessly taunts his target before moving in with him in a macho, testosterone-laden Odd Couple truce that ends up with them handcuffed together. Kinky? Not compared to earlier scenes. The smell of boiling rice sets Goro's libido for his mistress so aflame that Suzuki censors the gymnastic sex with animated black bars that come to life in an animated cha-cha. Because Suzuki pushed his yakuza parodies and cinematic surrealism too far, his studio, Nikkatsu, finally called in their own metaphoric hit and fired the director with such force that he was effectively blackballed from the industry for a decade. It took about that long for audiences to embrace his audacious genre bending--Suzuki's pop-art sensibilities were just a bit ahead of their time. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com

• Fighting Elegy | DVD | (29/01/2007) from £10.59   |  Saving you £9.40 (88.76%)   |  RRP £19.99

  In Okayama in the mid 1930s Kiroku (Takahashi) attends high school and boards with a Catholic family whose daughter Michiko captures his heart. He must however hide his ardor and other aspects of his emerging sexuality focusing his energy on a gang he joins breaking school rules and getting into scuffles. He comes under the influence of a young tough nicknamed Terrapin and together they lead fights against rival gangs. Gradually Kiroku and Terrapin align themselves with the right-wing Kita Ikki and Kiroku becomes a stand-in for the attitudes of Japanese youth who embraced the imperialism leading to World War II... Screenplay adapted from Takashi Suzuki's novel by Kaneto Shindo (Onibaba Kuroneko).

• Tokyo Drifter | DVD | (25/02/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  In Tokyo Drifter director Seijun Suzuki transforms the yakuza genre into a pop-art James Bond cartoon as directed by Jean-Luc Godard. The near-incomprehensible plot is negligible: hitman "Phoenix" Tetsu (Tetsuya Watari), a cool killer in dark shades who whistles his own theme song, discovers his own mob has betrayed his code of ethics and hits the road like a questing warrior, with not one but two mobs hot on his trail. In a world of shifting loyalties Tetsu is the last honourable man, a character who might have stepped out of a Jean-Pierre Melville film and into the delirious, colour-soaked landscape of this Vincent Minnelli musical-turned-gangster war zone. The twisting narrative takes Tetsu from deliriously gaudy nightclubs, where killers hide behind every pillar, to the beautiful snowy plains of northern Japan and back again, leaving a trail of corpses in his wake. Suzuki opens the widescreen production in stark, high-contrast black and white with isolated eruptions of colour which finally explode in a screen glowing with oversaturated hues, like a comic book come to life. His extreme stylisation, jarring narrative leaps and wild plot devices combine to create pulp fiction on acid, equal parts gangster parody and post-modern deconstruction. Mere description cannot capture the visceral effect of Suzuki's surreal cinematic fireworks. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com