Jô Shishido

Branded to Kill

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Hanada hiding under a car

Branded to Kill is a crime thriller with so much style it’s absurd. Clearly aiming for the ridiculous it is deliberately style over content. Hashed out on the hoof by eight different writers who were clearly egging each other on, it’s a mad tumble of French New Wave crash edits and film noir poses, all held together – if it is held together at all – by a jazzy, jerky, atonal score. Nikkatsu, the Japanese studio that made it, thought it was a mess and wouldn’t release it. Its director, Seijun Suzuki, thought they just didn’t understand what they’d been given and sued them. And won. The film got its release but Suzuki’s … Read more

A Colt Is My Passport

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Shiozaki and Kamimura

It’s either a western that looks like a hard-boiled yakuza movie or vice versa, but whatever it is 1967’s A Colt Is My Passport is a fantastically stylish affair. In pin-sharp monochrome it borrows from manga, Sergio Leone, Robert Bresson and Jean-Pierre Melville and it made enough of a mark on the young Denis Villeneuve for him borrow chunks of its look for his debut, August 32nd on Earth. As it opens the western and the crime thriller are already in contention. To a Morricone-esque score of whistles and twangy guitar we follow a hitman on a precise, methodical loner-hitman job – the high vantage point, the weapon screwed together from parts, a … Read more