Recensioni degli utenti

As many have noted, the ending confrontation s terrific. And the opening set-up --a hit man and his sidekick getting double-crossed by their boss, and having to hide out while they try to come up with an alternative getaway plan -- is also promising. But the long muddled middle drags the movie down to a non-classic level; the plot moves dutifully from point-to-point without generating much tension or interest in the mostly stoic characters. If you're a Jo Shishido aficionado, be aware that there were better vehicles for him -- in particular, this is not up to the level of Cruel Gun Story, Branded to Kill, or Youth of the Beast. Not a bad film, but from clips of the (admittedly great) ending and the cool title some have tried to portray this as the summit of Japanese noir, which it definitely is not.

CHIPMUNK. The lead actor looks like a chipmunk. It needs too be said because that's all you see initially. Apparently it was a result of cheek surgery.

Once you get past that this movie is a little treat. A Noir/Yakuza/Spaghetti Western mash-up that actually works.

Like "The Killers" we are in the company of a two-man hit team. With a tricked-out car complete with a massive two-way radio they are much in demand from the Yakuza. Then the job goes wrong and it's time to get out of town. However there's a gal at the motel who complicates matters.

The music is a combination of cool jazz (which could be in a contemporary Caine movie ) and a touch of the Morricones for the cowboy-like action sequences. It shouldn't work but it is really effective.

While watching a large variety and volume of titles allows one to better appreciate all that cinema has to offer, sometimes the other side of the coin is that a title can do everything right and still struggle to make a major impression out of everything one has seen. I feel that this counts among the latter.

The stunts and effects result contribute to sharp bursts of violence, and Nomura Takashi's direction is impeccably tight. Mine Shigeyoshi's cinematography is smartly dynamic, and crisp and vivid, making the viewing experience a real pleasure. The cast give strong performances. Ibe Harumi's score is a minor joy as it blends flavors of the spaghetti western with those more typical of contemporary crime flicks. With rich, terrific writing, even each scene in turn is a blast, so complete, vibrant, and fulfilling from one to the next that it's almost like we're getting a long series of short films. Characterizations are just as splendid, with the result that supporting character Mina, brought to life with welcome vitality by Kobayashi Chitose, threatens to upstage the hard-boiled, cool-headed yakuza protagonists. The story at large is firmly compelling and engrossing as hit men Kamimura and Shiozaki flee from their enemies following a successful assassination. Some bits and bobs throughout are rather brilliant, really, and the viewing experience is a great time all around.

From front to back 'A Colt is my passport' is an excellent picture. The thing is, even as I'm in the midst of watching, I'm fully aware that I'm unlikely to remember anything about it even two hours from now. Even the costume design, hair and makeup, production design and art direction, and filming locations are lovely, yes, and the climax and ending are exciting. I genuinely have no criticism to level. It's through no fault of anyone involved that the sum total doesn't specifically resonate with me; no doubt other viewers will find it altogether revelatory, and I'm glad for them. This is absolutely worth checking out if one has the opportunity, and anyway, there's nothing particularly wrong with a feature that comes and goes just as easily in our purview. It just means that the lasting value is up in the air. The long and short of it is that if you're in the mood for a fine crime movie regardless of whether or not it sticks in your memory, 'A Colt is my passport' earns a solid recommendation, and let's just leave it at that.

Like most of the other reviewers, I was struck by the similarities between this Japanese crime thriller, clearly modeled after 1950's American film noir, and Sergio Leone's iconic 'spaghetti' westerns. Briefly, hitman Shuji Kamimura (Joe Shishido) and his assistant Shun Shiozaki (Jerry Fujio) are hired to assassinate a yakusa boss only to be betrayed by their employer. On the run, they hole up in a seedy hotel, where Kamimura attracts the eye of former mob moll Mina (Chitose Kobayashi) who agrees to use her connections in the local merchant fleet to help them escape. The mob closes in and Kamimura has to make some tough decisions. Joe Shishido is very good in an atypical way as the impassive contract killer, as is the rest of the cast (especially Kobayashi), and the story moves along at a brisk pace to a satisfyingly bloody conclusion. The black and white cinematography is striking and, while the look is pure noir, the score is an unusual (but effective) mix of discordant jazz (typical of period crime thrillers) and music that is clearly an imitation of (or homage to) Ennio Marricione's iconic spaghetti-western themes. The climactic shoot-out, despite being fought between dapper Japanese gangsters, could have come from a '60's anti-hero western, with a stark landfill site substituting for the desert and choreographed gunplay featuring a variety of weapons and a number of ways to die. This was my introduction to the Japanese crime film (having run out of kaiju and tokusatsu films) and I was equally entertained and impressed and look forward to watching other films in the canon (many of which, I have noticed, have equally evocative titles).

Imagine, if you will, that instead of making westerns, Sergio Leone had decided to make crime thrillers on the model of RIFIFI, but set in Japan. That's something like what you get here. Jô Shishido is a hit man hired to kill a rival crime boss muscling in on other territory. While waiting for his flight out of town, the dead man's son shows up and offers to make a deal for the assassin's head. Jules Dassin might want us to think there is honor among thieves, but Leone never would, and neither does the director of this movie, Takashi Nomura.

It had a deliberately 1950s 'B' movie look, with its b&w photography and "stolen shot" camerawork, but the constantly moving camerawork and stunt gags are clear signs that this is serious film making.... and talented, too; Nomura is not that well known, but this is a good flick. Harumi Ibe's soundtrack starts out sounding like Morricone, but then switches to jazz arrangements for the crime story.

An uber-cool crime flick from the 1960's. The story is quite straight-forward, and I don't want to spoil any of it, just that it contains murder, betrayal, and a femme fatale.

As an action film, it is smart, well-paced and full of twists and "he got 'em!" moments. But it could also be read as a character study of a stoic, and nihilistic gangster facing a probable death-sentence.

There's not much else to say. It's a joyride, right up until the final shot - that made me at least - want to cheer out loud.

Beautiful cinematography with a slow-paced story ;; Hitman hired to kill his boss rival gets double-crossed . He and his driver are now on the run and hide out in a hotel by the pier and fall for a woman who longs to escape

Good concept , just slowly paced .

A Japanese New Wave Spaghetti Western-styled noir thriller and one of the rawest titles ever, A Colt is My Passport is a down-and-dirty but gorgeously photographed yakuza film, brimming with formal experimentation. The winning combination of Takashi Nomura's supreme emulation of the American noir formula with the sheer badassery of Jo Shishido trumps the often slow middle portion of the film. The climax alone, especially the final 15 minutes and masterful ending, more than makes up for the cluelessness of the majority of the storyline; ending not too dissimilarly to that of Sergio Leone's masterpieces. Rounding off the film with a musical score that sounds almost identical to that of Morricone's works, A Colt is My Passport is a lean, mean and efficiently entertaining piece of trans-cultural fusion where one's passport gives you a fast ride straight to hell.

A yakuza film that blends in elements of 007 gadgetry and a spaghetti western soundtrack and vibe. The chubby cheeked Joe Shishido plays an assassin who, along with his buddy, finds himself being hunted after a hit. It's a pretty simple story but I liked it for that, and for all of its cool male fantasy elements. One of those is a car which has a secret brake installed in the backseat, you know, in case you get carjacked! It's awful contrived to get to the ending - I mean, why did he drug and leave his partner to begin with, and why didn't the bad guys just take him directly off the boat during the exchange? But I didn't mind, because the film is so stylish.

Fifth film of five from the Nikkatsu Noir boxset, and this was a good one to save for last, as it was arguably the best of the bunch. Also, once again, it's a Japanese crime thriller with a great, eye catching title.

Plot? Nice and simple! I mean, there's some intricacies and double-crossings, but it's basically just about a dude (Jo Shishido) and his pal who pull off an assassination of a high-profile target, only to find escaping the fallout of the job greatly difficult.

While it might not have been as consistently thrilling as some of the other films in this boxset, I do think it ended the strongest out of all, with a fantastic action set piece. Shishido also creates a strong impression again, and funnily enough, I liked him more as a lone wolf in the couple of scenes where he's not partnered up with his buddy.

There was a lot going on in film world at the beginning of the 60′. The french critics (re)defined how we should see films: the idea that film is unlike literature or other art forms, and has rules of its own: visual narrative. Thus when we look today at the work of people like Hitchcock or Depalma, we can look at what they are doing, in the eye, although the stories they use to hang their visual ideas are (from a literature point of view) empty.

Truffaut/Godard went further ahead and became filmmakers, playing and poking fun at American stereotypes, specially the gangster film (the hat, the smoke style basically).

At the same time something even more interesting to me was happening in Italy, where western was being reworked, with irony and love, by a few Italians, led masterfully by Leone. The dollars films killed any chance we had to ever look at a classic western without clearly understanding how crooked is the whole Ford/Wayne concept of good/evil, and how prejudiced can pop culture actually be (Spielberg made recently a Ford inspired Bridge of Spies which, after the Iraq war, is still more offensive).

The fun thing is that Leone, soaked in westerns and American pop culture (the guy grew literally in Cinecittà) got his lessons from Japan. The first dollars film is a remake of Kurosawa's Yojimbo.

So this fun film closes the circle: a Japanese film which incorporates notions of American gangster films filtered through new wave french irony, and places the thing in a western context, taking the pace from Leone (and the music from Morricone), who himself went to Japan to start his adventure as a director. It really is fun just to get the references straight...

I loved this movie for the first 2/3rds, the cinematography, the style, the soundtrack, plus it kept my interest. Then, we get to the barge scene and it went down hill from there, with a ridiculous ending! 6/10 for effort!

(1967) A Colt is My Passport/ Koruto wa ore no pasupooto (In Japanese with English subtitles) ACTION THRILLER

Consist of remnants of "Yojimbo" and "For A Few Dollars More" Japanese gangland style. Adapted from a crime novel by Shinji Fujiwara, starring Jo Shishido as hired hit man Shûji ordered along with his partner, Shun (Jerry Fujio) to take out a former rival of another syndicate. And upon leaving, they are then get themselves double crossed for the purpose of money to capture and then execute the hit man responsible. Who are then stranded in a seedy hotel until further orders. It is their he builds a rapport with a young female worker of the Nagisakan hotel, Mina (Chitose Kobayashi). The last of 5 of the Nakkatsu Noir Criterion box set.

Superb music by Harumi Ibe, reminiscent of a western with music by Ennio Morricone. The film is not really a masterpiece, but it's not bad. The final scene is the most spectacular. There is also a girl who falls in love with the killer... Watch the film!

Rarely we see Japanese pictures have been swayed by Westerns cinema, due they would rather its own style, nonetheless sometimes someone dares broke such guideline as the filmmaker Takashi Nomura enforcing a spaghetti guidance regarding on farfetched narrative and soundtrack as well, it became a hybrid picture on Yakusa's mobster allied an Italian's accent, the final results is plenty enjoyable for Japanese taste and Western marketplace.

When a hitman (Joe Shishido) and his faithful sidekick (Jerry Fujio) were hired to kill a powerful and untouchable Yakusa's chief a hard task to be accomplished, although the smooth killer did it in plenty way, then came up an unflagging chase carried out by the own mastermind by a sudden new deal prearranged by the successors of the late boss, wherever Shishido goes there are their captors in advance, aid by a jinxed woman (Chitose Kobayashi) they envisage an escape by sea.

Meanwhile a truce is settle a so awaited showdown in a forsaken spot, then show up the spaghetti duel in whimsical Italian standard, to make it strong the own title has Western influence, worthwhile a look for every cinephile turned on Yakusa-crime genre, highly recommended!!

Thanks for reading.

Resume:

First watch: 2024 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 8.

A Colt Is My Passport, originally released as Koruto wa ore no pasupoto, is a Japanese film noir that mixes action thriller elements with melodramatic drama sections. This film was directed by Nomura Takashi who has worked as an actor throughout the fifties, sixties and seventies and who has also directed forty-four different films from the sixties until the nineties. This film is often considered one of the greatest accomplishments of his versatile career. This movie stars legendary actor Shishido Jo who should be known to anyone interested in Japanese cinema since he has participated in a whopping two hundred fifty-eight films. His gritty acting skills and unique facial features are certainly quite memorable.

This film revolves around an experienced contract killer and his driver who are hired by a mobster to assassinate a rival. After successfully completing said task, the two men are however not only tracked down by the gang of the victim and police forces but also by their employer who turns against them for strategical reasons. The two outcasts are now fighting for survival and aiming for revenge. They get some unexpected support from a young waitress who wants to organize some changes in her life.

This movie convinces on almost all levels. The plot is filled with enough tense moments to keep viewers watching until the very last scene. Regarding the latter element, this movie ends in a most explosive way that still feels spectacular to this day. The acting performances are great throughout and show the desolate lives of characters involved in organized crime. The locations have been chosen with great care and show the contrast of the luxurious mansions of accomplished criminals and the shabby hotel rooms in which poorly treated hired guns are expected to spend their time. This film has been shot with great care in form of precise camera work, fitting lighting techniques and sound elements that were quite impressive in their time.

Few minor downsides can be mentioned. The script is overall rather predictable and won't win any awards for creativity. One can also note that lead actor Shishido Jo keeps being typecast as gangster facing several opponents and getting involved with a beautiful lady. Even though you won't find much novelty when watching this film, everything has been executed with such great care that this movie can be considered a genre highlight of its time.

To keep it short and simple, A Colt Is My Passport, originally titled Koruto wa ore no pasupoto, is an entertaining gangster drama from the late sixties that impresses with wonderful acting, precise camera work, excellent lighting techniques, fitting locations, gripping plot and wonderful sound. Genre fans should certainly watch and enjoy this wonderful film that has both stood the test of time and preserved its unique charm from the sixties.

The plot is very simple but this is done very stylishly with a great soundtrack and strong performances. The end is tremendous and helps a lot. Overall a very strong noir with a Japanese twist.