Visez cette voiture de police

An exceptionally well-shot if bitterly average and utterly bewildering mystery, Take Aim at the Police Van marks the very early days for Seijun Suzuki, far less abstract than what I've heard about his more well-known works. He's shooting to a formula but delivering where it matters, be it the woman killed by an arrow to the boob or the faceless gunman who lovingly strokes his rifle's stock before sticking his bubblegum atop its scope. It's a film I wish was slightly more cohesive (and less jazzy) than it is but Police Van benefits from the endless swagger of its lead and fun filmmaking flourishes to stop it from being a frustrating or bad time. A testament to how artists pumping out quickie exploitation movies can often work in truths about their times that prestige filmmakers can't.

Suzuki would go on to do wonders with abstraction and suggestive atmosphere in his later films but this is mostly a compact potboiler that doesn't have any time to spare. In fact there's so much plot here we need to get inside the protagonist's head to hear him try and clear some of it out. Voice-over narration tells us that "Fuychita had a sister, she's my next lead" and we're immediately transported to a tavern where that sister may be spotted. The movie jumps like that from place to place and character to character, gathering very little as it does but a growing number of names and intertwining relationships which are only as meaningful as the next person or clue they lead us to, and then at some point a sharpshooter is shooting at the protagonist and an underground prostitution ring is revealed. This is the kind of movie where people are presumed dead only to reappear later, where the protagonist goes back to his place to find a key character waiting for him in his living room with no explanations given or asked, and where the bad guys stage an elaborate death for the protagonist and his girl to escape when two bullets would have sufficed. It's not film noir by the American standard of the term and it's not even film noir compared to some of the stuff Teruo Ishii was doing at the time in Shintoho studios. It's a comic-book murder mystery with onedimensional characters and convoluted plot (one to make up for the other), a couple of cool scenes, and a swinging jazzy score. Like a dimestore viper novel, it keeps you turning the page but you know you're reading something mostly cheap and disposable by the end of it.

Film 3/5 in the Nikkatsu Noir boxset I'm working through, and I'd rank this behind Rusty Knife (film 2/5), but ahead of I Am Waiting (film 1/5).

I'll give it this: Take Aim at the Police Van has a great title and a great opening- both work well to get you hooked early to the simple premise (prison guard is partially blamed for deaths that weren't his fault, so he goes looking for the real killers himself) that soon balloons out and gets very complicated.

While some of the complexity and mystery is intentional, given the main character doesn't really know what's going on much of the time, I think it may have left the audience in the dark just a little too much. You could say that about a lot of classic noir, though- I think it's The Maltese Falcon where the writer even admitted he didn't really understand 100% of the plot.

(EDIT: legend actually goes that it was The Big Sleep where the screenwriters were confused by what they were writing. Do remember Maltese Falcon also having a confusing plot, for what it's worth)

But in any event, it stays entertaining because of the fast (if almost a little too quick) pace, the stylish direction, and some exciting sequences. Plus the mystery is a pretty decent one.

It all makes for an overall solid watch.

Take Aim at the Police Van is action-packed, fast-moving Japanese Noir. Perhaps though, it's a little too fast moving. And unfortunately employs some rather erratic editing.

The story itself has all the makings of a good noir-ish detective murder mystery. Daijirô Tamon (Michitarô Mizushima) is a prison guard who has convicts murdered during a prison transfer. Tamon decides to hunt down those responsible. He quickly stumbles upon an "agency" that supplies young women as "showgirls" and "masseuses". There is no need to read between the lines or even get metaphorical as the fact they are being used as call-girls is blatantly evident. However, Tamon begins to have feelings for the agency's madam, Yûko (Misako Watanabe).

Directed by Seijun Suzuki, Take Aim at the Police Van builds up a good mystery and adds in a number of chases and shooting sequences. Yet the speed of the story and the choppiness of the editing truly shows that this was simply another movie quickly being fed through the Nikkatsu Studios machine. As swiftly Tamon decides to solve the case, the source of all the woe is discovered (also, such identity is not a shock), and the credits roll.

Take Aim at the Police Van is faster than service at a ramen house. But also quite tasty.

Great opening, but got messy quickly, and ultimately was an unsatisfying 79 minutes. The frumpled lead character (48 year old Michitaro Mizushima) reminded me a little of Glenn Ford in The Big Heat and the befuddling, often nonsensical plot reminded me of The Big Sleep, but Seijun Suzuki's work lacks the star power and atmosphere of those films. Questions piled up for me as I watched, and not just about the sequence of events from one scene to the next, but about basic character motivations for pretty much all of these people. The grand reveal of Akiba near the end was silly and a letdown too.

I never began actively disliking it though, because I never really knew what Suzuki was going to put on the screen next. There's a topless stripper shot in the chest with an arrow, and a James Bond like escape from an attempted execution (when of course a simple bullet would have made so much more sense). One of the mysterious young women being tracked down loves American rock 'n' roll, and has a gang of teenage friends pile out of car to protect her. There are several murders, but the main character believes in the goodness in people, and improbably the beautiful young femme fatale (Misako Watanabe) softens and falls in love with him. It's an absurdity set to a jazzy soundtrack and doesn't really work, but somehow held my interest. You can do better though.