The Execution Game (1979)

Original title: 処刑遊戯 (Shokei yugi)

With the help of a Woman who doesn’t even move her mouth in the proper moments when singing playback in a bar, a mysterious group lures everyone’s favourite asshole professional killer Shohei Narumi (Yusaku Matsuda) into a trap. They knock him out, kidnap him and them torture him a bit. Afterwards, they stage a fake escape, apparently to test his murder skills in practice, for what these guys truly want from Narumi is to hire him for a hit. Why you’d first torture him and finish the fake escape opportunity with shooting his gun hand is beyond me, but I am after all not a member of this highly professional and mysterious group.

The choice of target doesn’t seem promising either: it’s an old pro in the professional killing business, and the former favourite killer of the group, not something that should seem to be terribly promising for Narumi’s own future. Later, we will also discover that the old killer was seduced into working for the group by the same woman who pulled in Narumi. Eventually, Narumi agrees to the hit, but of course, the old hitman is not going to be the only one our protagonist will murder.

I’ve decided not to write up The Killing Game, the second film of Toru Murakawa’s second film in his “Game” trilogy about the bloody adventures of professional killer – and perhaps professional asshole too – Shohei Narumi, because what I wrote about the first film in the series, The Most Dangerous Game, also applies to film number two, just that the later movie adds some pretty horrible comic relief and doubles down on the misogynism of the first film.

The third, and for my taste by far the best, entry in the series cuts most of these elements down completely. There’s no comedy at all anymore in the film, we never see Narumi taking on his off-day lazy guy persona, and while the film’s portrayal of its two female characters isn’t exactly progressive, they are much closer to actual people than in the first two films, and given how pared down the characterisation has become here, that’s just as close as the men. In fact, the Woman isn’t quite your standard femme fatale. She certainly works for very violent men and is responsible for luring others into their hands, but she’s also clearly trapped in a world she never chose for herself, looking for outs – be it fleeing with the old killer or begging Narumi to kill her too after she has set the older killer up for his death – she knows won’t save her.

Narumi’s relationship to women has changed too. While nothing of this is ever spoken aloud – as a matter of fact, the film’s characters speak about everything not related to killing only in vague allusions and ellipses – Matsuda’s posture and some of Narumi’s actions make clear that this time around, he isn’t dominating a woman with his “awesome” (actually really unpleasant, of course) masculinity, but can actually fall in love like a real human being. His other contact is a young watch repairwoman who clearly takes a shine to him, and whom he will in the end reject, telling her not to put her trust in strangers too fast; one never knows how dangerous they could be. This might also be the most moral, perhaps kindest, act, Narumi commits in the whole of the series.

Ironically, this increasing depth of the protagonist’s emotional life happens in a film that strips down all clear emotional expression not happening through violence even further than the first two did, Narumi hiding what might be going on in his head behind a stoic pose and under his perpetual sun glasses. However, Matsuda manages to embody greater emotional depth by doing less obvious acting here; while his Narumi still acts cool and likes to pose with his gun in front of a mirror, the coolness does seem very much like armour this time around, Matsuda suggesting with small gestures and changes in his body language quite a few of the things neither his character not the film would ever outright state.

In this context, it is pretty clear that the Woman (whose name I never noticed if the film ever actually uses it) isn’t the only one trapped in a violent world she isn’t allowed to leave here; despite all his capabilities and his talent for violence, this time around Narumi seems just as trapped in his world as she is, his macho coolness a shield that seems the more cracked the less he lets the cracks show.

On the directing side, Murakawa is doing an inspired instead of a routine job for once. Here, every shot seems absolutely focussed on creating a very specific mood of alienation, the framing often trapping characters in their surroundings or keeping them separate and far from each other. From time to time, the film’s generally naturalistic (in a 70s grimy sense) style and colour scheme is replaced by splotches of intense tones of blue or red, suggesting a wrongness to some of the film’s most violent moments in the series typical scenes of Narumi systematically gunning down a whole gang of enemies. In general, The Execution Game’s action tends more to the systematic than the loudly spectacular, an approach that fits Narumi’s profession as it does the film’s more complex context.


So, quite unexpectedly, I found myself riveted by the final film in the “Game” trilogy, fascinated by its cold aesthetic, interested by the way it frames its tale of alienation, as well as surprised by the clear evidence that Matsuda is a much better actor than I had given him credit for. That’s a pretty fantastic way to end a little franchise.