Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards!

Director: Seijun Suzuki

1963 / 88min / DCP

Using a false identity provided by the cops, private detective Hideo Tajima (Joe Shishido, in his first substantive role for Suzuki) infiltrates an upstart yakuza clan headed by Manabe (Tamio Kawaji), trying to keep up appearances while undermining his new employer’s gun-running operations and, incidentally, romancing his boss’s mistress. A dynamically edited noir thriller staged with the brio and colorful verve of a movie musical, and one of the finest of the fast-and-dirty potboilers that Nikkatsu kept the director busy with while under contract, Suzuki’s bucking at the constraints of being assigned by-the-numbers genre fare approaching breaking point is clearly felt in in Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards!, as suggestions of the ultrastylized excess of his mid-’60s output creep into every other frame.

Distributor: AGFA

Part of After the Case