FIRING BLANKS : Rokuro Mochizuki’s Another Lonely Hitman [6/10]
Anyone watching the first scene of Another Lonely Hitman may wonder whether they're in for a gorefest that might make even Takashi Miike's Ichi the Killer look tame. We see a tense gunman injecting heroin in a restaurant toilet, before entering the dining area and blowing the brains out of his 'hit' – literally so, as we see the pulpy cerebral tissue glopping out all over the neatly laid-out tablecloth. "Call the police!" shouts out the hitman – later identified as Tachibana (Ryo Ishibashi) – as, in a classic Yakuza display of bravado, the assassin happily accepts a lengthy incarceration as a crucial part of his mob career.
On his release, however, Tachibana discovers to his dismay that times have changed during his decade inside. In a manner which may remind Brian De Palma fans of Al Pacino in Carlito's Way, he's instantly horrified by the way the underworld has become dominated by the drugs business. Having "kicked the habit" behind bars, he embarks on a one-man anti-junkie mission – which includes forcibly dragging call-girl Yuki (Mami Sawaki) through the horrors of cold turkey before he's ready to embark on any kind of physical relationship with her, though his impotence problems don't exactly help in that regard…
Mochizuki presents Tachibana's odyssey in images subtly leached of colour and vibrancy – everything is bluey-grey, Osaka is a wilderness of concrete, scenes have the sting of winter without a snowflake ever being shown. The one notable exception comes when Yuki sneaks a smoke of what we take to be crack cocaine – and the world brightens into a bold, technicolour playground. This coup de cinema is typical of Mochizuki's sparing use of effects – by showing us the brains splattering out in the very first scene, he lets us know that both he and Tachibana mean business. And though both speak softly, a big stick can be deployed if necessary: witness the brutal beating Tachibana doles out to the cocky young thug who's attacked the defenseless Yuki.
True to genre requirements, of course, such displays cause severe discomfort for Tachibana's zoot-suited, pseudo-respectable bosses in 'the organisation' : "Stupid!," one yelps, "you're following a code that doesn't exist any more!" Tachibana – aptly described in awestruck tones as a "steel-hardened gangster" – realises he has no place in such a world, and dreams of escape to become a fisherman in distant Okinawa. Anyone familiar with film noir and its many descendents will instantly know that Another Lonely Hitman is clearly not going to end with an idyllic Okinawa conclusion – but the film's strength lies not in the originality of its plot, but in the skilled professionalism by which Mochizuki breathes a measure of new life into what are, essentially, howlingly cliched situations and characters.
Neil Young
1st April, 2005
ANOTHER LONELY HITMAN : [6/10] : Shin kanashiki hittoman : Japan 1995 : Rokuro MOCHIZUKI : 105 mins
seen on DVD at home in Sunderland (UK) 30th-31st March 2005
with thanks to Paul Keenan at Artsmagic (www.artsmagicdvd.com)
this review is adapted from a feature on Mochizuki and Another Lonely Hitman written for the May 2005 issue of Impact magazine. Order it today!