Postman Blues

There's something in POSUTOMAN BURUSU for everybody: the romantic story, for women, about the postman who decides to date a woman on the brink of committing suicide; a quasi-detective story, where undercover cops try tracking down members of a yakuza gang; and a comical story, because they instead track down the postman since they think he may be their distributor, among other things. A light-hearted touch, involving the friendship between the postman and a washed-up hitman. Yeah, there's lots to find entertaining in this surprisingly flawless concoction of several genres by Japanese filmmaker, Sabu. What's great about POSUTOMAN is that the combo works!

The film begins, when Ryuichi Sawaki, the postman (played by Shinichi Tsutsumi), is caught by undercover cops, not only mailing a letter to the member of a yakuza gang, but walking in and staying there for quite a while. This gives the cops the idea that he maybe their distributor, so they follow him home. [NOTE: For the sake of plot-pointing, the mailman stays in the yakuza's apartment because they're high school buddies. They were just talking about stuff]

Returning home, they find him with bags of beer, figuring there may be other people inside.

Inside, Sawaki goes through a bag of mail he hadn't the time to send. One letter he finds, that touches him, is one of a woman, Kyoko (played by Kyoko Toyama), who has sent mail to her boyfriend that he hasn't replied to, and she's so lonely she's thinking about committing suicide. This prompts Sawaki to meet her, and hopefully change her mind.

The following day, after mailing his last batch of letters, he heads over to the Hospital where Kyoko is staying. He meets her, but only for a little while, she hands him a letter. He then meets a hitman, named Joe (played by Ren Osugi). These two have an engaging conversation on the lifestyles of assassins.

He tells him about a hitman competition he was in, and looks pretty confident that he won it. But as we hear his story, the judges were very worried about his health: he's getting too old.

Talking outside of the building, there are two undercover cops watching them from afar. Now, they figure the yakuza sent the postman to ask the hitman for a favor to kill someone.

Back at home, Sawaki reads the letter Kyoko gave him to send. This is about the time when he falls in love with her. So the next day, he meets her and talks to her.

Not looking all that confident about taking her on a date that moment, Kyoko gives a subtly sly speech about: "Not waiting to do something the next day, but instead, doing it now."

I'm going to quit plot-pointing right now -- I feel I'm saying too much. How 'bout some talk concerning 'why' this film is so good.

First of all, 'POSUTOMAN' isn't too timid about going deeper into the lives of its main characters. Particularly, the life of the hitman. If this were a Hollywood film, the hitman would have been younger and indestructible, not a "good guy," nothing to care for.

Sabu, working as both, director and writer, definitely gave himself a lot to work with, as far as making the romantic aspects romantic; the comical aspects comical; and the exciting aspects -- you know.

What made this all work, may be the reality of the characters. The postman is lonely and bored by his job, and has nothing to live for. So one day, he meets a girl who's going through the same dilemma, and they're able to comfort each other and eventually, love life -- and as seen in the last scene, the postman's only reason for going on (living and working) is so he'll meet her at the end of the day, as quickly as possible.

And the cops who are making themselves crazy out of the fear that there is a very dangerous man in their town, aren't that silly or cartoonish. These people are afraid, and will do anything their impulses tell them that'll extinguish that fear. [NOTE: This is all done in a very subtle manner, I might add.]

So, I think I've said enough.

Oh! The editing is one of the best I've seen. You'll notice this in the introduction of the postman character. I think I can guarantee that your jaw will be dropped for the duration.

This film was Sabu's second, and shows many of this auteur's characteristic hallmarks: a concern with drastically ironic coincidences and misunderstandings, effective staging and a striking disregard for naturalism being chief amongst them. It was also the first time that the director used the excellent actor Shinichi Tsutsumi as his leading man. The actor was to reappear very effectively in Monday, Drive, and Unlucky Monday, his stoic face a perfect foil to the director-screenwriter's often bleak view of fate and predations of satirised Yakuza. Tsitsumi's keatonesque presence, and his various misfortunes, increasingly provide the centerpieces to Sabu's films. The weakness of Postman's Blues, to some extent, can be traced back to the fact that the dirctor has not yet found way to situate his hero best at the heart of an ironic narrative.

Most of the present film's confusions take place outside of the hero's ken. Until the end, he remains unaware and is largely unaffected by the game fate is playing with his life. It creates a dissipation of effect, and despite a number of marvellous scenes, it is noticable that the most effective of them (the initial passing of the severed finger into his mailbag, his delivery of the same to the Yakuza boss; some hospital scenes and so on) directly involve Ryuichi. Away from him, the film seems to have no heart: the humour occasionally seems forced, as in the case of the Olympic cyclist sequence, and events loses focus. Sabu has not made this mistake again, and in succeeding features his leading man is conscious of the events being set in motion – an awareness adding immensely to the ironic pathos of his adventures.

For a the best introduction to the crazy world of Sabu, which often reminds one of Jacques Tati writing a Fritz Lang movie, the interested viewer should seek out the marvellous Monday. Having said that, existing admirers of the director – who surely deserves a wider reputation than he has – should see this, as Sabu's misfires are twice as interesting as most other director's successes.

This movie took me by surprise. My expectations were low, not because of their slightly low budget production or anything of the sort. But because I didnt watch a trailer or the genres for the movie... I simply let go of my pre-curiosity for things, and watched the thing.

I would say that for people that are interested somehow by this movie... OR ANY other movie for that matter, let the expectations, reviews or genres far away from you and adventure yourself onto any movie, you will have a good experience I promise.

There is no doubt in my mind that Japan is home to the most creative cinema in the world today, even if it doesn't have quite the same mix of artistic and technical virtuosity that Korean cinema has been providing of late. Many of the most interesting Japanese films are very low budget, squeezed out quickly by a small cast and crew and often not even getting a theatrical release in their home country. But they have been drawing increasing attention from the rest of the world, eager to lap up the freshness and creativity so often lacking in other regions' cinema. There are certain directors that have practically become household names - Takeshi Kitano, Takashi Miike and Shinya Tsukamato being the "Big 3" I guess (with Ryuhei Kitamura coming up fast). One director that has yet to achieve the kind of mainstream-cult success that he deserves is SABU (real name Hiroyuki Tanaka) - possibly because his films generally steer away from the kind of shocking scenes that gave many of his contemporaries their foot in the door.

SABU's films share much in common with Takashi Miike's films (in fact he may be most recognised as the detective in Miike's ICHI THE KILLER), in that they often revolve around the Yakuza and use their plots as a rough framework on which to build quirky characters and whimsical, sometimes surreal, scenes. But he has his own particular style that can be seen throughout his films - in particular he seems enamoured with people running - generally chasing or being chased, and most if not all of his films seem to revolve around such moments. Sometimes the "running" might be in a car ("Hard Luck Hero" and, I'm guessing by the name, "Drive"), whilst in Postman Blues it is mostly on bicycles.

The plot of the film is difficult to explain, as it's far more about the moments and the characters it throws up than it is about the narrative. This is true of most of Sabu's films I guess, which might explain why he often has trouble giving them a satisfying ending. Basically, Shinichi Tsutsumi is a postman with really nothing very remarkable in his life, pretty much letting time slip by. He's not even a very good postman, as he quite often doesn't even bother delivering his letters. Sometimes he does though, and this leads him to encounter certain characters in the film. First is his old schoolmate, now a Yakuza, then a sick young girl, and then a Hitman named Joe. These meetings trigger different chains of events that eventually come together and give POSTMAN BLUES probably the most satisfying ending for a SABU film yet. However, the ending is really not the important part of the film - it's the characters, their conversations and their thoughts and their little quirks that make the film very enjoyable and fairly stimulating for the mind. There are moments of absurdity that also make it very funny - it's the same sort of subtle/dark comedy that not everyone even detects in the films of Miike and Kitano.

I think I've seen 5 Sabu films so far, and the common theme(s) and style mean that they are all kind of similar, but all have unique and unusual characters that give the film it's own unique flavour. I think POSTMAN BLUES is the most satisfying Sabu film I've seen overall.

Unfortunately, Sabu's lack of international recognition so far means that it's difficult to find his films with English subtitles. His debut DANGAN RUNNER was released under the title NON-STOP in the US, but I think that's the only one that's had a legit English subtitled release. As usual with this situation, the grey market provides what the white market will not, and subtitled copies can be found on a certain auction site with little difficulty.

I know, it's a kinda old movie, but I recently found this in a shop and bought it right away. Of course it's always risky to just buy a movie because you think it looks kinda cool. But not with this one. I have to say, this is probably the best Japanese movie I've ever seen. It's touching, fascinating, funny (You don't even have to be Japanese to think it's funny (And that's mostly the case)), full of action and kinda crazy too. Believe me, you've never seen anything like this before. The story is full of little twists and you really can't predict any of the things that'll happen.

Of course it get's a ten out of ten from me.

People, watch it! It's totally worth your time!