Tokyo Drifter

Tokyo Drifter is another cinematic oddity from director Seijun Suzuki, made in 1966, not long before his super-weird Branded to Kill got him pretty much thrown out of the studio system. This one is not as weird as Branded was, but it's still pretty weird, and apparently, the studio revoked his privileges to film in color after they saw it.

From what I gather about Suzuki, he was employed by Toho Studios to mostly make standard low-budget Yakuza crime movies. After about 40 pictures, though, he must have got pretty bored, so he started breaking rules. His movies got more and more surreal and absurdist, while still using the framework of the crime genre to tell his stories. Critics apply a lot of analysis to the wackiness in these movies, positing that there's some sort of commentary being made on the crime genre itself. I'm not too sure. I kind of think he was just doing it with no intention other than to keep himself interested in his job.

The movie opens in black and white, with our hero, Tetsuya, a former hitman, taking a beating from a group of Yakuza thugs. They want to employ him, but he's gone straight. To prove this, he refuses to fight. Waiting in a car is the crime boss, saying it's only a matter of time before he gets back up and returns to form. Then there's a jarring cut into a color shot of Tetsuya standing up and shooting a gun. Just as quickly, it reverts to black and white for the rest of the scene, as the beating continues.

After this scene, the rest of the movie is in color. Very vibrant color, in fact. Suzuki is clearly having a lot of fun with it. The interior set designs have a very Warholian pop-art kind of feel. Tetsuya is identified by a sky blue suit, though it occasionaly changes to other light shades, and ultimately becomes white, in the good vs. evil showdown at the end.

Tetsuya's boss sees that the Yakuza is going to keep dogging them for Tetsuya, so he sends him away. He becomes the Tokyo Drifter, roaming Japan, and evading various attempts on his life. Eventually he comes back to Tokyo for the big final battle. None of this really matters, though. What matters is the weird stuff. Suzuki throws in a wacky, slapstick saloon fight straight out of a Hollywood western. There's a scene where the Drifter suddenly breaks into song while walking in the snow.

The final battle is set in a strange room washed entirely in black, with the exception of a statue holding some glowing red light thing. That is, until Tetsuya shows up, entering through a white tunnel, clad entirely in white. The lights go up in the room and suddenly everything is white but the bad guys in black. It's all pretty cool.

OK, it's not all pretty cool. The weird stuff is pretty cool, but there's some pretty draggy stuff in there to advance the plot. I could relate to Tetsuya, because at times, I found myself drifting too. Still, it has a short, 80-minute running time, so it didn't have a chance to get too plodding. The action sequences make the movie entertaining enough, but the interest in Branded to Kill is found in watching the director trying to break out of the claustrophobic box of genre conventions that he was trapped in.