'Jûsangô taihisen' yori: Sono gosôsha o nerae

Kinda reminded me of another foreign homage to American noir/crime drama shown a couple months ago on Noir Alley, "Le Samurai", in its gripping action scenes and high speed train-like pacing from director Seijun Suzuki and haunting, twilight cinematography from DP Shigeyoshi Mine combined with cardboard characters and a very silly story best described as Women Sex Slaves Meets King Lear. The difference between Suzuki's film and Jean Pierre Melville's is that while the Japanese director's characters tend toward the cardboard and melodramatic Gallic director Melville's folks are cardboard and oh so cool. Both fall far short of the ambiguous, lost, morally pliable people we see in the best Hollywood noirs. Give it a B minus.