Review by By Roger Carpenter
Fans of Japanese B-cinema and yakuza films have long known of Seijun Suzuki’s cult status both in Japan and overseas here in America. But availability of his films have been limited to his most prestigious pictures being released in fairly expensive editions on boutique labels, again implying that his films are only for high-minded cineastes with vast experience in film criticism.
But over the last couple of years Arrow Video USA has taken up Suzuki’s cause, releasing over a dozen of his films, ranging from his B-movie programmers at Nikkatsu Studios to his truly independent arthouse productions of the 1980’s. Collections such as Seijun Suzuki: The Early Years Volume 1 and Volume 2 each collect five early films from the director when he was churning out programmers for Nikkatsu at an astounding rate. Each collection is loosely categorized, thus Volume 1 is subtitled The Youth Movies and Volume 2, The Crime and Action Movies. Arrow’s arthouse label, Arrow Academy, also has released Suzuki’s trilogy of supernatural dramas set in the Taisho Period and released to international acclaim, aptly titled The Taisho Trilogy. Another of Suzuki’s films was collected in Arrow’s Nikkatsu Diamond Guys, Volume 1 release. So it comes as no surprise that Arrow would release another Suzuki film, this time the eccentrically-titled Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards!
Suzuki, who passed away in 2017 at the ripe age of 93, was always pretty vocal about his filmmaking style and techniques. While considered unique—even avant-garde—Suzuki has long maintained he was forced to do things differently by the strict studio system of the 1950’s and 60’s in Japan in order to stand out from the crowd. He and other B-movie directors were assigned films to make, given around three weeks to do so, and only around 72 hours for post-production before it was on to the next project. Scripts were turned out by writers who followed strict formulaic plots and directors were valued for their adherence to these scripts as well as for their economy of filming. So, while “good” directors churned out carbon-copy potboilers by the dozen, Suzuki chafed at this highly regimented way of producing films. He longed to move up to A-movie directing and he longed to be creative. And frankly, he was bored. Thus, he inserted humor into what was typically a very serious and sometimes depressing genre, focusing on style over substance, wild action set pieces, and whirling camera shots. The end result was fervent admiration from cinema-goers as well as the loss of his directing job from Nikkatsu studio execs—and his subsequent blacklisting from films for a full decade.
But before directing Branded to Kill–the film that was a smash hit, saved Nikkatsu from bankruptcy, and ultimately cost Suzuki his job—he was still struggling to separate himself from the pack. So, while Detective Bureau 2-3 was supposed to be just another routine action flick, Suzuki worked to make it more than that.
Nikkatsu Diamond Guy Jo Shishodo stars as private eye Tajima, a cool, suave, yet hard-nosed detective who sells his services to the police when they get in over their heads. With the aid of a gun given to him by the Chief of Police and a fake ID, Tajima infiltrates not one, but multiple, gangs in an effort to expose a gun-running operation which has degraded into mass executions as rival yakuza groups vie for the gun market.
One of Suzuki’s earliest color features—he would be forced back into what was considered less prestigious black-and-white film as punishment for his transgressions a bit later on—Detective Bureau 2-3 is a kaleidoscope of candy-color. Entire scenes are bathed in single colors. It is truly eye-popping cinema. The film starts out with a bang as a rival gang massacres another group during a gun-running exchange with the American military. Along the way Tajima infiltrates both gangs with the help of his two comic sidekicks, gets locked into a metal garage with flaming fuel oil pouring from the ceiling, steals the boss’s girl, and still manages to solve the case and escape with his hide intact. True to programmers of the day, which often featured the film’s stars in poppy song-and-dance numbers, Tajima even hops onstage during a meeting with the Yakuza heads to complete a fun little number in order to draw attention away from the suspicions of the boss.
The music in the film is Westernized and infectious. For those used to the traditional Japanese music in chanbara (period swordplay) films, this might come as a bit of a surprise. Some traditionalists are annoyed by the pop music contained in many of these action films but it was a standard practice as the studios further milked the stars by asking them to sing, dance, and turn out hit records as well as films. But it’s hard not to like such an upbeat rhythm, regardless of the type of film one is watching.
So while Suzuki toes the line in some respects, you can also pick out his attempts to make the film different, even if it doesn’t always work. He had not yet fully developed his style that would come into play in just a few more years with the release of films such as Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill. Detective Bureau 2-3 looks and feels like the initial picture in what might have been planned as a series if the first feature had done well enough. Clues such as it being filmed in color as well as the inclusion of the number one Nikkatsu star of the time, Jo Shishido, point to expectations beyond just one film. In fact, it’s easy to imagine Shishido as Dectective Tajima and his boisterous sidekicks in a long-running series of films helping the police solve their most frustrating crimes. That only one film was made points to the fact that Suzuki wasn’t entirely successful with this feature.
Shishido is good, but not great, in the role of Tajima. It’s a standard performance that doesn’t really stand out. The two comedic sidekicks aren’t as funny as they are annoying, with a scratchy-voiced female accomplice whose schtick is always coming up with another angle at blackmail while the male accomplice continually whines about his dissatisfaction at his job (perhaps a reflection of Suzuki’s own feelings of persecution in the studio system). The overall result isn’t the transcendence of Suzuki’s later, more rebellious pictures, but simply a higher level of junk-food cinema than most of his other contemporaries were churning out. That isn’t to say the film is bad. It is certainly an enjoyable film to watch, just not one this reviewer will go back to as frequently as other Suzuki projects.
Arrow has just released this film in a lovely edition on Blu-Ray. Special features are lighter than normal but include the theatrical trailer for the film, an image gallery, and a really excellent overview of the film by film historian Tony Rayns. Rayns has done a number of these insightful overviews on Arrow discs, along with discs from many other companies, and I have always found his interviews to be both entertaining and enlightening. His knowledge of international film is encyclopedic, his historic explanations for films are spot-on and lend a great deal to the overall understanding of a film in the context of the time it was made, and he’s also a darn good storyteller.
So, for those viewers who want to see a truly remarkable filmmaker as he works to develop the style that defined his later career as well as a fun popcorn film, Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards! is the ticket for a Sunday afternoon viewing. You can purchase the film directly from Arrow Video at http://www.arrowfilms.co.uk/category/usa/ or from Amazon.
