Ore wa matteru ze

A simple story (though its premise gives hope of something better) whose length depends to an uninteresting degree on portraying endlessly brutal fights between the protagonist (on the whole, a likable fellow) and gangsters dressed in clothes borrowed from American film noir. The love story which begins the narrative gets no more than a glance while following the protagonist's quest to find and then avenge his brother, but that relationship is also left barely examined in favor of the fights in various locales. Nor does the film explain in any way the enslavement of the singer. I was left with many irritated questions, including the fundamental one of wondering why directors think humans can sustain dozens of repeated blows to the head and gut and continue to fight for another ten minutes as though it was the first round. It's a form of laziness, a substitute for knowing and telling the story. .

A good movie with interesting characters and mood that sort of falls apart at the end when everything gets rushed to a conclusion. It's almost a classic, but just needed a bit more work to push it over the edge.

The earliest film in Eclipse's new Nikkatsu Noir set, this one stars Yujiro Ishihara and Mie Kitahara, the two stars of the previous year's Crazed Fruit (these are only two of about two dozen films they made together). I Am Waiting is a pretty good crime flick about a retired boxer who meets up with a lounge singer who is trying to run away from her gangster employer. The boxer has been waiting a year for his brother to contact him from Brazil, where he hopes to move and help his brother farm. Turns out that his brother never made it there. His mysterious disappearance is linked with the aforementioned gangsters. The story here is really good, and, in general, it's well directed and performed. It does move a tad too slowly, though, and the two halves of the plot, the romance and the mystery of the missing brother, are connected by a pretty big and hard-to-buy coincidence. It's a good film, but it's one that feels like it could have been done a little bit better (the perfect film for a remake!).

I Am Waiting (1957)

A Japanese kind of noir flavored crime drama that uses tropes and cliches to their max. And it works. There is the woeful beautiful woman and the troubled handsome man, and they meet in ways that make their relationship complicated. Some thugs get in the way, the past has its grim details resurface, and a couple of side characters give the main pair color and life.

It's kind of great in a B-movie way. The filming (camera and lights) by Kurataro Takamura is terrific, and helps hold it up even if the writing is sometimes a bit obvious. The acting is solid, maybe even very good, but the characters are made to play types that don't allow for as much development as you might like.

In all these ways the film is a lot like the average noir. But it doesn't hold a candle to a great American noir. The editing is sometimes awkward, the story a hair too simple (despite all the unnecessary flashbacks), the good and bad guys a bit too simple in their motivations. I think you can love this movie for exactly these things, but know it ahead of time.

Takamura is terrific, it has to be repeated. The long fight scene near the end, and the final long take before the credits, are both first rate stuff. This is director Koreyoshi Kurahara's first film, and if a novice feeling sometimes shows, the movie also reveals a bold talent and reckless love of cinema, which is really all that matters.

This Japanese noir from director Koreyoshi Kurahara is gritty and cool, taking us to smoky pool halls, sleazy bars, and cabarets filled with young people dancing to western music. Yujiro Ishihara makes quite a leading man; he plays a tough guy with a past he's trying to escape from and a dream of moving to Brazil that's mysteriously disappearing. He oozes confidence as he stands up to gangsters and tries to protect a cabaret singer (Mie Kitahara) who's run away from them. The two make quite a pair and I was surprised to learn from Alicia Malone at TCM that aside from marrying in real life, they made 24 films together. The plot to this one is a little contrived in some ways, such as the number of guys that have been killed in barroom brawls and just how easily gangsters will hand over a gun, but it works nonetheless. Very satisfying.