The Most Terrible Time in My Life

Director: Kaizo Hayashi

1993 / 92min / 4K DCP

The first entry in Hayashi’s trilogy of films about the misadventures of detective Maiku Hama (his name a nod to Mickey Spillane’s hard-boiled antihero), The Most Terrible Time in My Life finds the indefatigable Yokohama gumshoe—played with deadpan cool by Masatoshi Nagase (Mystery Train)—on the trail of a Taiwanese immigrant’s missing brother… and in the middle of a brutal gang war. Newly restored for the trilogy’s 30th anniversary, The Most Terrible Time in My Life is a stylized mashup of ’40s American noir and early ’60s Nikkatsu crime thrillers with an offbeat sense of humor all its own, shot in that seediest of formats, black-and-white widescreen, with Hama, who keeps his office in a rundown movie palace and drives a Nash Metropolitan with California plates, the apotheosis of the hipster-sleuth.

Distributor: Kani

Part of After the Case