Another Lewis Rice O’Donnell recommendation, The Yakuza Papers are a five film series of gangster movies directed by Kinji Fukasaku (Battle Royale) based on news stories and journalists covering the post-war era. Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Deadly Fight In Hiroshima (1973) aka Hiroshima Death Match is the second movie in the series, and our disgruntled ex-solider yakuza gangster main character from the first movie, Shozo Hirono (Bunta Sugawara), steps back as a supporting character in this entry. We focus instead on Shoji Yamanaka (Kin’ya Kitaōji) who is a young gambler with emotional mood swings – if he is wronged, he goes all out – so he winds up in jail after stabbing gamblers who threw him out of game. While in prison, he becomes friends with Hirono serving a stretch. The film’s setting is Hiroshima during the Korean War, and Yamanaka later reveals he wanted to be a kamikaze pilot in WW2 but was too young. Instead, his fidelity and servitude are given to those who show him kindness – a restaurant owner Yasuko (Meiko Kaji) who takes pity on him when he can’t pay, and her uncle Muraoka who asks him to join his Yakuza clan. The other new character is the antagonist, Katsutoshi Otomo (the great Sonny Chiba), whose gang are dressed in loud shirts, leather jackets and wear sunglasses, court press attention with their wild behaviour, and cause constant violence for the clans they war with including Muraoka’s gang. The docudrama style of the first movie continues with freeze frame introductions of each member in the Yakuza organisation, and freeze frame shots of them when they die with a post-script in text of when/how they died. The violence is chaotic and captured with close, tight camera moves, which become almost impressionistic in the ending with the police hunting a fugitive in the rain at night. Even though we see how the younger generation in Hiroshima either observe or disregard the Yakuza’s code of honour, the film remains cynical about such a code, particularly when it continues to depict older bosses manipulating their underlings for their own selfish ends. All five Yakuza Papers movies are remastered and available to stream on Tubi. Recommended.
VHS Tracking 