Drifting Detective: Black Wing in Harbor
                         
Director:  Kinji Fukasaku
Year: 1961
Rating: 7.0
After some eight years of working as an assistant director at Toei, Kinji Fukasaku finally got his chance at directing a film. But Toei started him off slowly with four black and white crime films that were under an hour each. And they all starred a young looking kid out of television named Sonny Chiba or Shin'ichi Chiba. There were two films of Sonny as private eye Goro Saionji and two Funky Hat films in which he is Ichiro, the son of a private detective. This is the sequel to Fukasaku's first film - Drifting Detective: Tragedy in the Red Valley, also shot in 1961. The two of the four that I have seen are good fun with a mix of action and straight-faced comedy. Sonny looks like he is barely out of high school which at 22-years old was close to the truth. Neither the director nor his main actor probably had any idea that they would both go on to legendary careers.



A young pretty woman (Shigemi Kitahara) knocks on his door to hire him for a job. He is sleeping though and tries to shush her away - till he sees the money. He wakes up fast. His office doubles as a bedroom and apparently a graveyard for stuffed and mounted deer heads. Two ships in her village have been shipwrecked and she wants him to look into it. It takes about 5 minutes of screen time before Sonny is beating up on thugs. He carries a rifle with him through the film and uses it to knock around a group of truckers who try and play tough with him and the girl.  The trucker gang decide he needs to be killed and turn to Tetsu the Joker to kill Goro. Tetsu (Harumi Sone) is a hint of Fukasaku characters to come in his cap and confidence with his twirling gun, psycho laugh and matching clothes.



He wants to kill Goro but in a fair fight - a duel on the beach. They keep trying but something always comes up and there are no better friends than two men trying to kill each other. Goro keeps digging - and in the end the unseen head of the gang decides it is time to clean up loose ends and brings in a squad of four assassins all in black fedora's, white suits and striped ties - one in black face for some reason. A decent shoot-out at the end. At 58-minutes this flies by. An entertaining jaunt.