CRITERION REVIEW: #39 TOKYO DRIFTER (dir. Seijun Suzuki) 1966
THE FILM: Watching Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill in such short succession (as Criterion has always urged you to do), it’s hard not to read them as Suzuki’s wild attempts to illustrate his own marginalization. Branded to Kill systematically destroyed one of the era’s brightest screen idols by stripping his character of his own agency, whereas Tokyo Drifter — which functions like some kind of acid-jazz appetizer — stubs a feared yakuza thug right out of the business, turning the underworld inward against him until he has no choice but to hit the open road and embrace the wandering life of a journeyman.
Tetsuya Watari is Tetsuya “Phoenix Tetsu” Honda, a square-jawed and buzz-cut yakuza henchman whose place in the world is a bit unsure now that his boss has retired. A rival gang is interested in his services, an offer that Tetsu makes the potentially fatal mistake of refusing. Tetsu’s boss, spurred by ulterior motives, encourages Tetsu to head for the snow-covered hills for a while, but the violence hounds him wherever he goes. The first 30 minutes or so are bogged down by inelegant plotting, but as soon as Suzuki frees Tetsu from the burden of genre mechanics and sets him loose, it’s all gravy. Really bloody gravy.
Nikkatsu had hoped to force Suzuki into delivering a conventional gangster saga by slashing the film’s budget, but the move didn’t exactly have the desired effect. Tokyo Drifter, a film that was destined to become a cinephile’s fetish object from the moment it received its title, is a bat-shit blast of mad neon and bebop jazz — favoring senses over sense, it’s an endlessly watchable film that’s only intermittently entertaining, its feverish aesthetic flourishes so hard to shake that they continue to inform filmmakers some 45 years later. Tokyo Drifter plays out like a musical that’s too busy disposing of yakuza to notice its own form, a rich vein of blustery jazz and wistful ballads the only things connecting the carnage. Between the songs and Suzuki’s wild use of color — the film’s hues are so flashy and anarchic that Nikkatsu demanded Suzuki’s subsequent pictures be shot in black & white — the whole thing feels kinda like a blood-soaked riff on The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, mounted on mayhem and stopping only to inspire KIll Bill’s “House of Blue Leaves,” and who knows what else (if you squint you can see all the way to Mulholland Drive). Tokyo Drifter is so unhinged and pitched towards oblivion that it’s hard to believe Nikkatsu allowed Suzuki to even make another film, and whileBranded to Kill is the more significant of these two pictures, Tokyo Drifter sure makes for some riotously retina-burning context.
THE TRANSFER: The HD transfer for Tokyo Drifter presented Criterion a very different challenge, but I’m pleased to report that, in its own right, the picture here is every bit as strong as that of Branded to Kill. Consistency is the thing with a film like this, and the Blu-ray gets it right in a big way, carving stable through-lines across the blasts of neon color with which Suzuki carves up this twisted yakuza bloodbath. And that blindingly blown-out opening sequence? It’s supposed to look like that — I guess the film doesn’t open with 5 minutes of blank white light, after all.
THE VERDICT: I’m not as over the moon about Tokyo Drifter as I am Branded to Kill, but fans of the film will be delighted with what Criterion has done with it. If I owned a sweet little speakeasy, I’d just loop this disc on mute and project it against a wall in the back… you know what I mean? Gorgeous.
