Kenjû zankoku monogatari

1964
1h 27m

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

A convict fresh out of prison, with a handicapped sister, is coerced by a wealthy mob boss into organizing an armored racetrack car heist.A convict fresh out of prison, with a handicapped sister, is coerced by a wealthy mob boss into organizing an armored racetrack car heist.A convict fresh out of prison, with a handicapped sister, is coerced by a wealthy mob boss into organizing an armored racetrack car heist.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.1/10

1.3K

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Trivia
The 120 million Japanese yen in 1964 equaled about $331,500 at the time - an amount that equates to nearly $3M in 2021. Or to figure it another way, 120 million yen in 1964 equates to about 543,600,000 yen in 2021 - an amount that exchanges to nearly $4.8M in 2021.

Goofs
After diverting the armoured car with the fake detour signs, the fake cop moves all of the signs while still within sight (in the rear view mirrors) of the truck and escorting police.

Quotes
Joji Togawa: We're a team now. We're all in this together - gambling with our lives. This is our last chance to score big. We may not like each other, but we have to work together!

Connections
Featured in Best in Action: 1964 (2020)

User reviews19

Featured review

7/10

Very satisfying

Film 4/5 in the Nikkatsu Noir series, and like Take Aim at the Police Van before it, Cruel Gun Story has a great title.

This one is less noir-ish and more of a straightforward heist film than any of the films in this boxset that came before, and I was perfectly okay with that. Heist movies are always satisfying when they get the basic components right, and all the stages are executed fairly well here- the planning, the heist itself, and then the inevitable fallout and consequences.

There's some good shootouts, and Jo Shishido makes for a good lead, as he always seems to do. I wish the aftermath of the heist had been a little more engaging, or at least on par with the first two chunks of the film, but it still had a decent conclusion overall.

Easy to recommend if you want something like Stanley Kubrick's The Killing, which is another tight and satisfying black & white heist movie that I should maybe revisit some day.