Monday, December 29, 2014


Movie Review

Pistol Opera (2002)

June 13, 2003

FILM REVIEW; Climbing the Assassin Career Ladder

Published: June 13, 2003

For those who thought Seijun Suzuki's high-strung, lawless and watchably frenzied shoot-out drama ''Branded to Kill'' (1967) was hard to follow, his femalecentric hybrid remake/sequel ''Pistol Opera,'' which makes marginally more sense, will come as a relief. Or should I say ''relive,'' because that is the goofy subtitled translation of what Dark Horse (Masatoshi Nagase), one of the hit men in this competition of killers, utters to the beautiful heroine, Stray Cat (Makiko Esumi): ''Soon, I'll relive your anxiety with the relief of death.''

''Pistol Opera,'' which opens today in Manhattan, is insanely likable but suffers from anemia. The 80-year-old Mr. Suzuki doesn't crank up the high-bore hysteria he used to generate; using movement as much as dialogue to express character in an enervated environment costs this film needed urgency.

Stray Cat is given the order to eliminate 100 Eyes and Useless Man, the top-ranked killers of the Assassins Guild. This will move the third-ranked Stray Cat up to the pole position, among other things. (''Pistol Opera'' never gets around to explaining the origins of the Assassins Guild and its point system. We're not sure if the guild is closer to the Teamsters or to the World Boxing Organization.)

For those in need of logic, see ''Hard-Boiled'' or any of the hundreds of Hong Kong action pictures inspired by Mr. Suzuki's ''Branded to Kill,'' his baroque and enthusiastic gunplay classic. (For a remedial course on Mr. Suzuki, ''Branded to Kill'' is available in a lovingly restored version on DVD.)

Imagine if Howard Hawks had remade ''Rio Bravo'' -- well, he did, actually, but imagine if he had done it with a female cast and stirred in a slowed, sexual tension between the characters. That is what happens in ''Pistol Opera.'' Stray Cat is being cruised by Sayoko Uekyo (Sayoko Yamaguchi), who passes along the guild assignments and flirts in a way that makes Sharon Stone's performance in ''Basic Instinct'' seem a work of nuanced understatement.

For Stray Cat, chasing down her felony-rap colleagues is just part of her workday, be it a shootout with a foe in a wheelchair or hand-to-hand combat with a man who is sexually aroused by pain. The bold, heavy color scheme makes clear that the movie is in the hands of a master; its lurid palette evokes a punch-drunk dreaminess that brings to mind the lethal, gravity-defying action of ''Branded to Kill.''

One character -- for a lone-wolf killer, Stray Cat has a lot of friends -- recounts a dream she had of the writer, actor and culture lightning rod Yukio Mishima. (''I loved his books,'' she murmurs dreamily.) And ''Pistol Opera'' has some of the same feverish and ritualized qualities of the movies in which Mishima appeared, like Hideo Gosha's 1969 crime drama ''Hitokiri,'' in which an unallied samurai is played for a fool.

There is a welcome reappearance in ''Pistol Opera'' by the character Goro Hanada, who was the protagonist of ''Branded to Kill.'' Played this time by Mikijiro Hira, he brays brashly from his crutches to his protÃ©gÃ©e Stray Cat about the future: ''When the shake-up is over, it'll be your chance.'' He also offers, with as much mystery as his brashness will allow, ''I had more fire at your age.''

In both instances, Mr. Suzuki could be talking about himself. ''Branded to Kill'' cost the director a lot of capital; its brazen freakishness got him dismissed from his studio and blacklisted. ''Pistol Opera'' is a fist thrown at his naysayers; would that it had more fire.


Directed by Seijun Suzuki; written (in Japanese, with English subtitles) by Kazunori Ito; director of photography, Yonezo Maeda; edited by Akira Suzuki; music by Kodama Kzufumi; art director, Takeo Kimura; produced by Ikki Katshima and Satoru Ogura; released by Media Blasters and Tokyo Shock. At the Cinema Village, 22 East 12th Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 112 minutes. This film is not rated.

WITH: Makiko Esumi (Miyuki Minazuki/Stray Cat No. 3), Sayoko Yamaguchi (Sayoko Uekyo), and Masatoshi Nagase (Man Dressed in Black/Dark Horse).

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