What seems at first like a standard Yakuza programmer (there were dozens of them churned out by the Japanese majors every year) is turned by its director into a deliciously perverse comedy that centers around a treasure in diamond inside a dead gangster's stomach!
Director Seijun Suzuki-- early on in his career, and before being recognized as a significant talent-- manages to make this film into something that only he could have possibly directed. Suzuki's films are exercises not in action but in absurdity, violent or otherwise; and in this sense the film is one of his first real classics. Suzuki obviously emphasized the more singular and perverse elements of the middling script, at the expense of conventional elements. Ultimately the film may be unable to transcend the limitations of its B-movie genre and origins: for instance, the action climax, though superbly shot, still feels kind of standard, without the memorableness that one would expect from a 'Suzuki film' of the 1960's. There's also a very tame ending(undoubtedly forced by the studio). But there are many other precious moments in the picture, full of innovative camera-work, black comedy, social awkwardness, and glaring cinematic artificiality. But it is all done in a more subtle and unassuming style than we find in Suzuki's later films. Arguably the film is too subtle, and not stylistically extreme enough. Probably the time was simply not right for the kind of films that Suzuki wanted to make- older filmmakers still dominated the studios, while iconoclastic filmmakers who would leave their mark on the sixties-Okamoto and Shinoda, for instance- had not yet gained respectability. But while this may ultimately prevent the film from being a masterpiece, it also accounts for some of its charm. This is one rare Suzuki film that is not afraid to be 'coy'- that is, to keep the audiences guessing about what the story (and film) is really all about. One never knows what will happen next, whether it will be something normal and and typical of the genre, or something oddball and perverse. It's much like Hitchcock in this respect. Suzuki quickly abandoned this sort of coyness once he was given more freedom- but its quite amusing in its own right.
Furthermore, the characters are more humanely treated in this Suzuki film than in his greatest classics, which are rather pitiless. Mizushima, playing the world-weary hero, is genuinely conflicted, and the audience feels it. Seldom do we feel much more than amazement, disgust, or fear, from Suzuki's gangster protagonists.
All in all, it is an extremely diverting, amusingly wicked yakuza film, a minor classic of the genre. It's easily worth the mere $15 or so for the excellent DVD from Home Vision (the Criterion people); for fans of the genre, it's a must.
