This film was Sabu's second, and shows many of this auteur's characteristic hallmarks: a concern with drastically ironic coincidences and misunderstandings, effective staging and a striking disregard for naturalism being chief amongst them. It was also the first time that the director used the excellent actor Shinichi Tsutsumi as his leading man. The actor was to reappear very effectively in Monday, Drive, and Unlucky Monday, his stoic face a perfect foil to the director-screenwriter's often bleak view of fate and predations of satirised Yakuza. Tsitsumi's keatonesque presence, and his various misfortunes, increasingly provide the centerpieces to Sabu's films. The weakness of Postman's Blues, to some extent, can be traced back to the fact that the dirctor has not yet found way to situate his hero best at the heart of an ironic narrative.
Most of the present film's confusions take place outside of the hero's ken. Until the end, he remains unaware and is largely unaffected by the game fate is playing with his life. It creates a dissipation of effect, and despite a number of marvellous scenes, it is noticable that the most effective of them (the initial passing of the severed finger into his mailbag, his delivery of the same to the Yakuza boss; some hospital scenes and so on) directly involve Ryuichi. Away from him, the film seems to have no heart: the humour occasionally seems forced, as in the case of the Olympic cyclist sequence, and events loses focus. Sabu has not made this mistake again, and in succeeding features his leading man is conscious of the events being set in motion an awareness adding immensely to the ironic pathos of his adventures.
For a the best introduction to the crazy world of Sabu, which often reminds one of Jacques Tati writing a Fritz Lang movie, the interested viewer should seek out the marvellous Monday. Having said that, existing admirers of the director who surely deserves a wider reputation than he has should see this, as Sabu's misfires are twice as interesting as most other director's successes.
