A professional killer (Jo Shishido, the man with the chipmunk face) is hired by a gang to kill the head of rival yakuza family. He and his younger protege (Jerry Fujio) do the job professionally and perfectly.
Jo's clients aren't as impressed I was by the the performance, though. They weren't planning on having their enemy killed right in front of their boss.
This isn't the only trouble the killer and his associate are getting into: Their victim's gang wants revenge and manages to kidnap the two man at the airport, right before they can step into the safety of a plane.
Our dubious heroes are able to escape their predicament quite easily, but must now trust into their clients to hide them and get them onto a ship to safety.
They hide in an inn that's mostly frequented by trucker. Here the obligatory sad but kindhearted waitress just waits for the magical charm of some surgically altered cheeks. Of course, their enemies will find them there. Of course, the waitress will help them. Of course, their first escape attempt will not be successful and the younger man will be kidnapped.
Everything will end in a final showdown between Shishido and a bunch of nameless henchmen.
As you can see, the plot of A Colt Is My Passport is far from being original, but, as is so often the case, the important thing is again the execution.
Director Takashi Nomura handles characters and plot as minimalist as possible. Motivations and background are deliberately kept unclear (there is even a moment when Shishido stops his client's explanation of the reason for the murder with a short "That's enough."), everything and everyone is driven by either loyalty or money. This world of archetypes is shown in pictures that remind me in their coolness (in both senses of the word) of a more dynamic Jean-Pierre Melville with Jo Shishido as an even cooler and more suave Alain Delon.
The film's pacing is absolutely perfect, the action fast with a tendency to the slightly surreal, while staying far away from the barely controlled madness of Seijun Suzuki's movies for the Nikkatsu studio.
The music comes from a place where Cool Jazz and Ennio Morricone had a love child that had nothing better to do than to become the rhythm of Japanese action films.
And, as if all this wasn't enough to let me wait anxiously for the coming Criterion edition, the tense finale turns out to be as perfect as they get.
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3 comments:
I'm excited to hear that Criterion is going to be releasing the films in the Nikkatsu Action series. Colt was the only film I was able to see when the series played San Francisco a few months back, and I've been anxious to see the rest ever since.
And I'll be just as happy to see Colt (and the other films) in a different form than as dubious laserdisc rips.
Two Nikkatsu boxes plus two single discs from Criterion do sound heavenly.
I'll have to check this out at some point. Guess I can wait for the Criterion DVDs. :)
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