Koroshi no rakuin (1967)

User Rating:

7.3/10   

Director:

Seijun Suzuki

Writers:

Hachiro Guryu (writer)
Takeo Kimura (writer)

Release Date:

15 June 1967 (Japan)

Genre:

Action | Crime | Drama

Plot:

The film's story centers on Hanada, a.k.a. "No. 3 Killer," the third-best hit man in Japanese organized crime...

Plot Keywords:

Dead Bird | Butterfly | Rice | Absurd Violence | Yakuza

Cast

Jo Shishido	...	Hanada Goro
Mariko Ogawa	...	Mami Hanada
Anne Mari	...	Misako
Koji Nambara	...	No.1
Isao Tamagawa	...	Michihiko Yabuhara
Hiroshi Minami	...	Gihei Kasuga
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Iwae Arai
Franz Gruber	...	Western man
Kosuke Hisamatsu
Hiroshi Midorigawa
Tokuhei Miyahara
Hiroshi Naga
Takashi Nomura
Atsushi Yamatoya

Also Known As:

Branded to Kill (International: English title) (USA)

Runtime:

98 min | Argentina:99 min | USA:91 min

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Germany:16 | Australia:M | Argentina:16 | Sweden:15 | UK:18

Company:

Nikkatsu

Trivia:

Director Seijun Suzuki was fired for deviating too far from the script.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Oldboy (2003)

Trapped in a dead-end job? No hope for advancement? At least you're not addicted to the smell of rice.

Rice-sniffing, #3 Killer, dead butterflies, snuff films. Where to start? 'Koroshi no rakuin' is a surreal, Kafkaesque, timewarp of a film masquerading as a stylish 60's hit-man movie. Nikkatsu Studios fired Seijun Suzuki over this film's "incomprehensibility."

Suzuki is an auteur of the highest magnitude, nobody has ever used a widescreen, black and white, "Nikkatsu Scope" frame quite like him. The dense and beautifully chaotic images are overwhelming on your first viewing, it's the sort of movie that shows you something new every time you watch it.

Essentially Hanado Goro (Jo Shisido) is the yakuza's #3 Killer, but he desperately wants to be #1. As might be expected, being a hired gun is a stressful life and Hanado takes the edge off with lots of sex and the smell of boiling rice. The sex gets him embroiled in some sort of a plot and he finds himself getting much better acquainted with #1 Killer than he'd ever wanted to be.

Time backs up, swirls around, restarts, slows down. Major themes include, but are not limited to: ambition, lust, rivalry, bureaucracy, addiction, loss of self-control. There's a certain parallel in that with this picture Suzuki derailed his own career as a "salary man" making Nikkatsu yakuza flicks, many of Hanado's thoughts and impulses must have been the director's own.