Popular reviews

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  Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★★ 2

  Action! - The Way of the Yakuza: Suzuki's Irreverent, Jarring and Illogical Brand

  The film noir in which a woman dies with an arrow stabbed in one of her nipples.

  Hands down one of the most intriguing and tense film noirs in cinema and a hidden gem within the genre. The editing on the dream sequences, the idyllic quality of many of the film tied up with some great suspenseful scenes that had me on the edge of my scene like one towards the end when the bad guy ties up these two characters to a gasoline truck, ties them up, put the car on the move with the gas thing open and letting spread all over the ground and…

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  Review by Josh Lewis ★★★

  MANY ACCIDENTS

  HAVE OCCURRED

  IN THIS AREA

  CAUTION!

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  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★ 2

  "Scary times we live in."

  We open on a gunman stroking his rifle before eponymously taking aim at the police van, and this first scene sets two major themes in motion that will develop throughout the rest of the film.

  First is our assailant's fondling of his firearm: here, violence is fetishized, guns become like the rice in Branded to Kill, an object of masturbatory fascination. Furthermore, this sexualization is painted with the brushstrokes of adolescence: guns are repeatedly referred to as "toys," some of which actually are toys, bb guns made for children but played with by adults.

  The second point of interest is the van itself, or more precisely its passengers: this vehicle is transporting prisoners, people who…

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  Review by Ben ★★★ 3

  I am convinced that Seijun Suzuki's films have too much swagger, too smooth of jazzy scores, and too many fun filmmaking flourishes to ever be a bad time. Sure, I wish this felt more like a cohesive whole. I also hoped it would have made some bold statement or provided an unforgettable stylistic splash to stick with me—Tokyo Drifter, The Madness of Youth, and Branded to Kill each did at least one of those things. But it is not like there is nothing to love here. There are still several moments of brilliance, particularly the opening and ending sequences. If you go into the movie prepared to coast on pure vibes, it's unlikely you'll end up too disappointed. Any higher expectations and you could find yourself feeling frustrated.

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  Review by D Rock ★★★ 5

  One cannot accuse Seijun Suzuki of beating around the bush, or of dreaming up opaque movie titles. Because within six minutes of Take Aim at the Police Van starting, someone has, yes, taken aim at a police van.

  But why? That, is a mystery. And it's one our hero the prison officer Tamon (Michitaro Mizushima) sets out to solve. He's not a cop, heck he's not even technically a prison officer any more since he's on suspension after the fiasco with the van, which he'd been riding in. But he's going to get to the bottom of it.

  And... that's the rest of the film. And though Suzuki might be a straight-to-the-point guy, sometimes his plots get a little hard…

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  Review by Dizzle_Sizzle ★★★ 3

  "Dirt sticks to everyone in this line of work."

  Basically woven exercise in stylism adhering to the shadowy persona that governs all, conjecture as it pertains to others' sinister dealings serving as a reliable tool of one's potential self-destruction. Human-beings peddled as merchandise and leverage ("I follow the cash") in a play for control over enterprise, outsider interference prompting violence in spades as indeterminate motive and mortality turn up right alongside it. Simplistic in scope, in that bad people may very well have rotted out their purportedly intrinsic, latent goodness with all of the wrongdoings that come to define what it means to establish overall dominance. Flourish does most of the heavy lifting here, as plot bobs, weaves, ebbs, flows,…

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  Review by george ★★★★

  the opening and ending scenes are so well-crafted, and the cinematography is so fucking gooood

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  Review by PopcornIdeology ★★ 2

  At least he went on to make Branded to Kill…

  POLICE VAN 4

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  Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★½ 2

  In some ways, a routine Nikkatsu programmer made special by Seijun Suzuki knack to make material disorientating. The crime investigation just becomes laced with a suffocating feeling ready to engulf all.

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  Review by Thomas Ringdal ★★★½

  Asian April #5

  Not Suzuki at his craziest (and best), but nevertheless an entertaining noir even if the big reveal left me dumbfounded.
  A very strong first half is more than enough to make up for a meandering second half, and a nikkatsu film is never, ever boring. The opening scene is especially fun.
  The sniper henchman should've got a film of his own as well, I think I'd have loved that to bits.

  Had Suzuki made this 10 years later, I think it would have been a masterpiece.

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  Review by Jay D 's Watching ★★★½ 2

  Feels a bit safe to say this would be 'lesser Suzuki' in the sense that it's relatively straightforward, if a shaggy-dog story, where the ambiguity as to what the whole point was at the end is.....part of the point, and at 80 minutes, the overriding mystery never really has time to wear out its welcome. In addition, Suzuki directs energetically (the opening setpiece and a final confrontation in a trainyard deserve special mention) and lead actor Michitaro Mizushima, who plays the prison guard who starts digging around and looking for revenge after he's suspended when the titular attack on a police van happens at the beginning, and his passengers are killed, has a good, anchoring energy-sort of a downmarket Daisuke Kato with Robert Forster's forehead.

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  Review by Gentry ★★★ 3

  “Dangerous toys.”

  A world seen through the crosshairs. The most straightforward “Hollywood noir” of the Nikkatsu films I’ve seen so far. This one actually has a legit femme fatale + murdered strippers and “spa hotels.” After prisoners in a police van are gunned down, the prison guard in charge is put on 6 month leave, and uses his vacation time to team up with the crossbow-wielding daughter of a Yakuza boss to unravel the case.

  This felt a lot longer than its 79 minutes because of all the disparate threads being pulled, and the various characters whose motivations are initially unclear. It mostly comes together at the end, but Suzuki is maybe working a tad too close to the edges of American-style noir for my tastes. Six years later he would swing the pendulum all the way in the other direction, too close to the sun. That's what we're aiming for.

  ➡️ Japanese Noir | Suzuki