Koi no katamichi kippu

A One Way Ticket To Love is Shinoda's first movie as a director. A movie about rock and jazz musicians, it was designed to appeal to a young audience. Apparently it failed, because it bombed at the box office and it was years before Shinoda would be allowed to make the kind of movies he wanted to. The story revolves around a saxophone player, a girl he meets who may have been trying to commit suicide and a singer who is being billed as the Elvis Presley of Japan. All three of them become manipulated by members of the older generation. Can they escape their situation? Or will they, as one character puts it, be sacrificed at the altar of money? It's an interesting story at the Japanese entertainment industry of the early 60's. Unfortunately none of the characters are that interesting. Particularly the saxophone player and his sort of girlfriend are so passive that they seem practically inert. It's too bad because it it seemed like it could been a really good movie.