Sympathy for the Underdog

Gunji comes out of prison. His gang has been destroyed, his territory has passed to a large Tokyo based organisation, and his men have scattered. He gathers what is left, leaves Yokohama and goes to Okinawa, where he tries to build a territory from nothing. But Okinawa has an order of its own, and the Tokyo organisation does not let go. Kinji Fukasaku directs. Koji Tsuruta plays Gunji, with Tomisaburo Wakayama and Noboru Ando in the cast. It was made before Fukasaku's Battles Without Honor and Humanity series and announces that style: handheld camera, hard cutting, and a portrait of a gang carrying no heroism. The subject is the difference between the traditional yakuza and the corporate organisation. Gunji carries the old rules and what faces him operates like a business; the film does not take the side of the old, it only shows it being crushed. The Okinawa sections were shot on the island shortly before its return to Japan; the American military presence and the island's separate position stand plainly in the film. Among Toei's gang films it is one of the more melancholy; the end is exhaustion rather than victory. Who it is for: viewers who like seventies Japanese gang cinema and Fukasaku. Who it is not for: the crowded cast is hard to follow, the violence is dry, and the narrative is demanding for anyone who does not know the conventions of the period.