DVD Reviews

DVD Review: Another Lonely Hitman

By Andy McKeague May 27, 2005, 15:15 GMT

The 1990’s were a hotbed of movies made for the straight to video market in Japan. In this period of time, some emerging directors started showing promise in this freedom of expression, and the likes of Takashi Miike, Shinji Aoyama, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Masato Harada and Rokuro Mochizuki were unleashed on an unsuspecting audience.

In 1995 Mochizuki made his first movie in the Yakuza mould, a genre of movies that he had always wanted to get involved in since growing up on a diet of Kinji Fukasaku gangster (especially the 'Battles Without Honour and Humanity' series) and samurai flicks, and the Nikkatsu soft-core skin flicks he started his career in. This was ‘Another Lonely Hitman’ (aka 'Shin Kanashiki Hittoman').

Taking a very common staple from Yakuza movies and basing it in parts on short stories by Yukio Yamanouchi, Mochizuki casts Ryo Ishibashi as Tachibana, a drugged up gangster shooting up for his first hit for his crime boss. Within a few minutes of the movies opening we have brains flying across a dinner table and a second gunshot crippling the hit’s daughter. Still glazed, Tachibana orders for the police to be phoned. This Yakuza is going away for his crime, happily accepting his fate as a crucial part of his mob career.

10 years have passed and Tachibana is released from his imprisonment. This is where the meat of the story takes place. Like a fish out of water, Tachibana tries to cope not only having been in prison for 10 years but also the changes that had happened outside. The ‘code’ that Tachibana led his life with is long gone; the crime lords are now more like a corporation of zoot-suited businessmen, holding hands, doing deals for golf courses and running drugs. It’s a long way from the crime world he had left behind. It seems that whole of Japan is just a shadow of its former self in the eyes of the now freed Tachibana. In fact he feels like a foreigner despite being back home.

The bosses gather and Tachibana is given his welcome back present of money from all the crime families for paying his dues, only to give it back to the boss for 'safe' keeping. He is also paired with a young gangster Yuji (Kazuhiko Kanayama): an idea to keep the old hitman under control and out of trouble and to show him the new ways of the family.

During a party Tachibana meets a prostitute, Yuki (Asami Sawaki), who becomes the reflection of his old life and gives him a goal and purpose. It is the drugs that he blames for the misery in his life. He now has the aim of cleaning up Yuki and in doing so he paves his way in exorcising the hurt he caused the daughter of the mob boss he hit, still haunting him after all those years. What happens is reminiscent of ‘The French Connection 2’, as he attempts to dry her out, of which during the interview with the director in the Special Features, he sites as a main influence to his story.

Can Tachibana ever adapt to this new breed of Yakuza, save the girl and himself. Or will he finally be pushed to his breaking point?

Despite the movie's title containing 'hitman' and the opening of the movie, there is very little in way of death and carnage in the proceedings. This is a moody character piece, which is carried along by the ever excellent Ryo Ishibashi who would go from strength to strength after this. He has since then performed in several of Kitano’s and Miike’s movies including the role of Ishihara in ‘Brother’, the main character, Aoyama, in ‘Audition’ and the mob boss in 'Gozu'. In the US he starred in Sean Penn’s ‘The Crossing Guard', and more recently he played the Inspector in the US remake of ‘The Grudge’.

It is somewhat voyeuristic too, and this leads us to some uncomfortable and slightly amateurish sections of the movie, Yuki sitting with her legs spread and urinating in her underwear, and Tachibana vomiting straight into the camera are prime examples.

Artsmagic has released another gem from the cannon of Rokuro Mochizuki ('The Fire Within' aka 'Onibi', will be released later this year) and it is presented here in Amaporphic Widescreen although the movie plays with an usual matting on all four sides of the frame and it does not hinder the look of the saturated scope of his camera (the exception to this is one scene were Yuki is smoking dope, where the colours vibrantly jump off the screen). Sound options come in both Dolby 2.0 channel and a 5.1 option, both in original dialogue with optional English subtitles.

The director is interviewed in a Q & A session in which he reflects on shooting the movie, what led to that point and what it has influenced him to do afterwards. It lasts around 26 minutes and we only get to see his responses but the questions are captioned for us at the start of each reply. Brief written bios and filmographies are given for the director and his two main male stars. An excellent audio commentary comes from Midnight Eye man Tom Mes, the author of the fantastic ‘Agitator, the cinema of Takashi Miike’ (from Fab Press).