The Boss's Head
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Synopsis
1968. Gangland strife in Northern Kyushu follows family troubles within the Owada gang when boss Owada (Ko Nishimura) takes in wanderer and assassin Shuji Kuroda (Bunta Sugawara) after he does time for the assassination of a rival boss. Rejecting his drug-addicted son-in-law Kusunoki (Tampopo's Tsutomu Yamazaki), much to the anguish of his conflicted daughter Misako (Meiko Kaji, Female Prisoner Scorpion), Owada sets up his own demise when rogue elements within his gang notice the unrest. Kuroda, promised a payment for his jail time, also targets the new Owada boss with a ruthless vengeance, and recklessly lays waste to the local crime elements in order to achieve his financial rewards. Director Kiniji Fukasaku takes his popular series in a new, original direction with this standalone film, and introduces a fresh style and method of storytelling to the yakuza genre, including a pair of female characters who are just as calculating and ruthless as their male counterparts.
Picture 6/10
Arrow Video presents Kinji Fukasaku’s The Boss’s Head on Blu-ray in a new dual-format edition, available exclusively in their New Battles without Honor and Humanity Trilogy box set. The film receives a 1080p/24hz high-definition encode on a dual-layer disc, presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1. Arrow is using a master supplied to them from Toei.
Like New Battles Without Honor and Humanity this master comes from Toei and while it has some decent attributes to it it’s still an incredibly mediocre presentation overall. Though the high-definition image certainly looks better than what DVD could deliver it still has a few issues. It can still have a fairly filmic texture to it but the image is rarely all that sharp, looking a bit muddled and fuzzy. This is further agitated by the black levels which are quite milky, crushing out details and making darker scenes harder to see.
Brighter scenes fair a bit better and there are some impressive colours at times, like reds and blues, but the film has a fairly dreary look, relying on grays and browns more, though this seems to be the film’s intended look.
Surprisingly the restoration work looks to have been quite thorough and I don’t recall any severe source issues remaining at all. In this regard I was incredibly impressed but it’s weakened by other aspects of the presentation.
Audio 5/10
The Japanese 1.0 linear PCM track is a bit more a mess here. The first film’s soundtrack had some problems but was generally fine, about what I would have expected, but this track is more distorted in comparison, and everything about the track, from dialogue to music sounds, I don’t know, blunt-er in comparison. It’s pretty rough.
Extras 2/10
Arrow spreads special features over the three films in the box set. The Boss’s Head only comes with one significant feature itself, a new interview with screenwriter Koji Takada, who was brought in to work on this film and the last one. For 12-minutes he talks about how the new trilogy compares to the original series and what he was able to contribute, addressing he had issues dealing with the one character’s addiction in the film. It’s brief but interesting enough and does continue on into the next disc.
The disc also includes a theatrical trailer and a teaser trailer.
Closing
Like the first film in the set it’s a bit rough (particularly the audio) but it could be worse. It’s just a shame Arrow wasn’t able to do their own thing with it.
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