12 Big Time Gambling Boss

[swo17]

Big Time Gambling Boss



Tokyo, 1934. Gang boss Arakawa is too ill and a successor must be named. The choice falls on Nakai, but being an outsider he refuses and suggests senior clansman Matsuda instead. But Matsuda is in jail and the elders won't wait for his release, so they appoint the younger and more malleable Ishido to take the reins. Clan honour and loyalties are severely tested when Matsuda is released, resulting in an increasingly violent internal strife. An atmospheric tale of gangland intrigue written by Kazuo Kasahara (Battles Without Honour and Humanity) and starring Tomisaburo Wakayama, (Lone Wolf and Cub, The Bounty Hunter Trilogy) and genre legend Koji Tsuruta, Big Time Gambling Boss is one of the all-time classics of the yakuza genre. Paul Schrader called it the richest and most complex film of its type, while novelist Yukio Mishima hailed it as a masterpiece. Radiance Films is proud to present this crucial re-discovery for the first time ever on Blu-ray.

Limited Edition Special Features:

• High Definition digital transfer of the film
• Uncompressed mono PCM audio
• Visual essay by genre expert Chris D on the film and its place within the period and genre (2022)
• Ninkyo 101: A masterclass with Mark Schilling, author of The Yakuza Movie Book (2022)
• Trailer
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by maarko phntm
• Limited edition booklet featuring new writing on the film by author Stuart Galbraith IV, and critic Hayley Scanlon
• Limited edition of 2000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings

[therewillbeblus]

As someone who can usually take or leave yakuza films that aren't heavily stylized in some idiosyncratic direction, I thought this was pretty stellar. What begins as a pretty paint-by-numbers intra-organizational conflict setup gradually flows into a nuanced portrait of fatalistic impulses in a launched flux of indomitable friction. These don't just occur in terms of expected genre-staples like rigid egos and cultural norms -though these too are exhibited with an enlightened complexity. They also present themselves in assumed roles that, once initiated, become irreparable forces; whether actions taken by ancillary characters are assigned to the agency of the key players (i.e. a friend stepping in, a wife taking on a duty through suicide) or the key players' simple actions and non-actions (themselves actions, of course) igniting a path of unintended harm. I respected how these circumstances are almost never then met with simplified self-preservation or resentment, but simultaneous empowerment, wilting, and complex grief. This is a great film in that category of 'continued escalation of problems that get way out of hand' because it doesn't forfeit the action-genre components and relentless forward momentum but still manages to meditate on the pathos behind all of it, and never enters into a blind thrill ride that so many of these kinds of films inevitable default into.

I love how casualties are traced back to a character's proud moment or moral choice from earlier by some reactive character, and how the film treats that perspective as entirely valid without endorsing a particular ideology or taking hindsight-bias at face value. There's a surging empathy towards all the characters we actually get to 'know' to some small or large degree in this film, and in that way it functions a lot like The Wire, each principal richly defined and objectively stripped naked of any special privileges: dignified and flawed alike. The social politics of the systemic milieu are also fleshed out in a similar fashion, and I guess that ties back into the beginning of this post- the film doesn't really contain a loud style, and it's all the better for it. Kôsaku Yamashita trusts the material and his actors, but has his hands firmly planted in the driver's seat, transitioning between an eclectic palette of shot choices and blocking techniques with a seamless precision that always seems to suit the scene's intent, yet never calling attention to them. Going back to read through the description on Radiance's disc, it's almost too-perfect to cite Paul Schrader's championing of this film, because his films echo a similarly bald presentation engaging with intricate themes and character mixed with appropriate restraint of nebulous psychological and interpersonal energies. I wouldn't be surprised if this film influenced his own approach, especially the recent stretch of hits he's had.

[L.A.]

Beaver.

[Orlac]

Cinesavant review - https://trailersfromhell.com/big-time-gambling-boss/

[Finch]

The US LE is down to its last copies too with US retailers, according to Radiance.