Rough-edged writer/director Samuel Fuller never quite hit the A-List, but had a fine run of what might be called B+-pics @ 20th/Fox in the ‘50s. (Mostly indie B-pics before & aft.) This mob drama, superbly shot on location in Japan, may be the slickest, most entertaining from those prime years.* Working smoothly in his 2nd CinemaScope pic, after the claustrophobic submarine espionage of HELL AND HIGH WATER/’54, Fuller, unlike so many Hollywood helmers in Japan, picks right up on the possibilities of using the small boxy apartments & sliding panel doors as framing/editing devices. (Cinematographer Joe MacDonald’s doing?) With his typically blunt style in characterization & storytelling giving the film a special insider/outsider feel, only some overly coy bath scenes date. Robert Stack is stiff, but fine as the undercover police agent who infiltrates Robert Ryan’s Tokyo protection racket. On the way falling for the Japanese widow of one of the gang while, apparently having Ryan fall for him! Ryan suppresses this into bromance, but something’s going on between these guys; and second-in-command Cameron Mitchell sniffs it out. Good stuff. Better than the police contingent, who get a bit lost in the action, though it’s fun to hear Sessue Hayakawa, two years before BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, speak with a generic dubbed voice. It all ends in a thrilling, slightly berserk shoot-out, high above the city on a revolving marque. With an A-lister’s budget, Fuller could have shot this as dusk turned to night and the pulsating lights came on.
DOUBLE-BILL: *Academics & auteurist wags go for Fuller’s more extreme low-budget indie work, even when it spills over into self-parody. But his best may be his first @ Fox, PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET/’53.
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