Samuel Fuller directed and cowrote this typically hard-boiled drama set in Japan following World War II. Eddie Kenner (Robert Stack) is given a special assignment by the Army to get the inside story on Sandy Dawson (Robert Ryan), a former GI who has formed a gang of fellow servicemen and Japanese locals who use their muscle to take over Tokyo's pachinko racket and commit a series of train robberies, targeting deliveries of military ammunition. Eddie is supposed to gather evidence on the murder
of a soldier believed to have fallen in with the gang, and Eddie tries to blend in with the group to find out how they work. Hoping to learn more, Eddie also begins romancing Mariko (Shirley Yamaguchi), a Japanese woman who was married to the slain gangster, and he learns that the ruthless Dawson kills men who are injured during robberies rather than leave them behind to possibly testify against him. After a burglary goes wrong, Dawson becomes convinced that there's an informer in the group; wrongly believing it's Griff (Cameron Mitchell), Dawson kills his loyal soldier and makes Eddie his second in command. Veteran Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa appears as Inspector Kito, a Japanese police detective working with Eddie to crack the case. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
Fuller's masterful use of natural locations within the Cinemascope frame drives the film, especially the climactic shoot-out on a giant, spinning globe at a carnival.
The limits of the lengths to which dazzling camerawork and curled-lip noir bravado can make up for thoroughly ham-fisted dialogue are tested in Sam Fuller's gangster picture
This could have been a credible film noir piece were it not for the inept dialog, the brightly lit sets and the insistence that Japanese people are merely movie props to be placed here and there throughout the film like houseplants.
January 25, 2009
Randy Tippy
Super Reviewer
January has been the month of House movies. That is watching movies with house in the title. This one filmed in 1954 in Japan a time when the United States had very little culture influence on that country and this film shows the old beauty of Japan. Loaded with a host of stars. Its about a Gang of crooks from the US
robbing different places in Japan, and during which a army soldier is killed and the army sends an undercover man in to bust the gang. Its a great story with great color. 4 1/2 stars, they just don't make films like this anymore.
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