Cops vs Thugs

Kinji Fukasaku's jitsuroku films are very dear to me, which is a strange thing to say about films that seem so absolutely convinced of the ultimate uselessness of human kindness or love or hope. All relationships in them are doomed from the start, because all relationships in the films of this phase of Fukasaku's career are based on violence. And what begins in violence, ends in violence.
But these are no European art house flicks, so instead of ponderousness and middle-class self-pity we are served a precisely drawn kind of carnage; brutality directed both inwards and outwards.
But another "but": This alone would make Fukasaku only a nihilist, someone who produces fun, if somewhat flat, bloodbaths. If it weren't for the hurt that shows in every small gesture of friendship and kindness, even in the most cynical of jokes. Fukasaku showing the world as he saw it didn't mean he liked it this way, only that he was unwilling to lie about it - to the viewers or himself.

Darling of the Day:
"Who must we kill to stop all this nonsense?"