Koroshi

Danger Man through season 3 is superb, of course emanating from Patrick McGoohan's proven acting skills combining sharp dialogue, excellent scripts, and cinematography, the latter of which is worth a comparison to The Prisoner.

As a flashback parallel, cinematography can be character. In Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the personified lushly green and dark jungle is the most character.

So The Prisoner had to be in color...color is character embodied, for example, in the costumes of the villagers which ironically contrasts, as has been noticed, with their mostly frozen facial expressions noticed, especially in close-ups.

Danger Man had to be in black and white, providing the film-noir nuances which dramatized John Drake's increasingly angst driven unwillingness to compromise his ethical values, mimetic of how McGoohan himself felt when he refused to play Drake as another James Bond.

This feature film combines the only two episodes ever filmed from the fourth season of Danger Man. Unlike the previous shows these ones were in colour and the production values are pretty good. The problem was that Patrick McGoohan was tired of the series and left the show just two episodes into the new season. The production company tried to salvage something from this disastrous situation and made this feature film from the two episodes. On the basis of this it seems obvious that Danger Man was going in the direction of the James Bond franchise, which no doubt displeased McGoohan who was certainly no fan of the 007 series. In fact, Koroshi seems very similar to the Bond film You Only Live Twice which was made very shortly afterwards. As a standalone film it's good enough, if nothing especially great. The two episodes are joined together fairly well and the whole thing does gel reasonably effectively. The 'Koroshi' part which makes up the first half is the better of the two segments, with the scene in the theatre with the manikins being a standout. Overall though I suppose that this is best seen as something of a curiosity piece and of interest also as the thing McGoohan did just before embarking on making The Prisoner.

Koroshi is actually a compilation of two Secret Agent episodes, Koroshi and Shinda Shima. In the last season it was decided that the episodes would be made in color. Unfortunately, Patrick McGoohan grew tired of the role and quit with only two episodes being made. Koroshi deals with an ancient death society based in Tokyo which plans to execute world leaders. Drake travels to Japan in order to seek out and destroy the organization. Shinda Shima deals with an island which is supposedly and evil one but contains a base in which the society conducts their affairs. Drake helps to overtake the island give it back to its people. Both episodes are action filled yet they lack the witty dialogue and character development of previous Secret Agent shows.

Patrick Mcgoohan had just worked exhaustively for the past 5+ years, first, on the half- hour series, then the hour-longs, of what for me, and many others, is one of the BEST programs TV's had to offer.

KOROSHI is the last two episodes (only ones in color) of (what was) DANGER MAN's final - aborted season.

I first saw KOROSHI, and was thrilled to see it, as it had been YEARS since I'd seen DANGER MAN (before DVD's and, yes, even before Videotapes, 'kids').

What had been a thrilling show, with terrific scripts, and terrific acting, had it's life sucked out - by, ironically - color.

In the intervening years, since I first saw KOROSHI, DANGER MAN has been released on DVD. On them are the two episodes that make up KORSHI, one being an episode bearing this title, the other, SHINDA SHIMA.

I WISH I could say that independently seen, the episodes were stronger.

Sadly, they're not.

As another reviewer said, it just seemed to be trying to be 'Bond-like,' and one of the great things about DANGER MAN was John Drake's lack of guns (as Drake once said; I don't like guns. They're noisy, and they hurt people. I do very well with my hands).

I think the ONLY good thing about KOROSHI, is knowing that, as Mcgoohan's interest in continuing DANGER MAN had left, his mind had drifted to creating the most original, thought provoking television series television had seen.

The PRISONER was about to be born.

The only two loosely-connected episodes of the third season of DANGER MAN put together to make a feature film, mostly for television.

KIROSHI loses most of the atmosphere of the series when it goes to color. Color probably increased production value so the style changed to exploit the popularity of James Bond films. It lost much of its subtlety. The writing is actually very bad with plot elements seemingly borrowed from Bond films and perhaps MISSION IMPOSSIBLE. Patrick McGoohan did well to leave the series. The fighting is unconvincing and the villains are a little too much on the a cross between Bond and Fu Manchu. The stage-bound production is even more obvious in color.

It is just a lukewarm, stagy, comic-book-like spy adventure.