Greed in Broad Daylight
                         
Director:  Kinji Fukasaku
Year: 1961
Rating: 7.5
Aka - High Noon for Gangsters

Aka - Hakuchu no buraikan


After Kinji Fukasaku directed four films of one-hour each as a training period with Toei, they allowed him to make this, his first feature film. Still a crime film and still shot in black and white. It is very stylish using sharp editing, multiple dramatic close-ups and is lean like a well-cut slab of beef. It is a heist film in which Fukasaku seems a lot more interested in the interplay between the thieves than the heist. It felt influenced by Rififi and other European neo-realism films. There is an air of fatalism hanging over the film right from the beginning. Which ones will survive, which ones will betray the others. It is just a matter of time and most of the suspense comes from waiting for someone to make the first move. There is $500,000 at stake and everyone wants it, is willing to kill for it and are low life scum. Throw in racial antagonism as well and you have a powder-keg. It is impossible to root for any of the characters - they are all louses - perhaps the most sympathetic is a rapist who has fallen for a prostitute. It is a tale of greed with no honor.



Mitahara (the always reliable Tetsurô Tanba) is putting together a gang of strangers to one another with the intention to rob an armored car carrying American dollars to a US military base.  He has something on all of them and the sniff of big money gets them to agree to do the job. One is black GI Tom (Issac Saxson) who raped a girl and killed her boyfriend. A Yakuza gang is looking for him. An American named John Kennedy (Robert Dunham) and his wife are brought in as well. A Korean spy. Mitahara's girlfriend Aki (Naoka Kubo) is part of the plan and finally Mitahara has his own gunsel (Harumi Sone) who practices his knife skills on scurrying cockroaches and can't wait to kill someone. Mitahara tells him to be patient because he wants all $500,000.



They are stuck together in the same house waiting for the go signal - getting on each other's nerves - women seducing others, Tom wanting to rape everything in sight, the white guy hating the black guy, the Korean hating the Japanese. It would make a great reality tv show. Everyone is smart enough to know they will likely be betrayed by someone but are willing to take a chance. They bring in a half-black prostitute (Hitomi Nakahara) as a plaything for Tom and he falls for her. Another gang figures out what they are up to and want to be in on the kill. Finally, the time comes and it rains and rains. More time to hate each other. Then it happens and it all goes to hell like you knew it would. Very well shot and paced. Though you have an instinct where it is going to end up, it is good fun getting there.