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As with the previous film, the story revolves around a number of characters. Rei Kanzaki is male host at a club, where each person’s rank is measured according to the number and price of bottles their clients order. Rei has the ambition to be number 1, and is willing to go to extremes to succeed. Ayaka, a teenager who is desperately in love with him decides to help him, and is willing to go to even further extremes just to do that. Koji Aizawa is a father whose wife is constantly nagging him to get money, and also the leader of a gang comprised of underage kids dressed in military-style jackets. When Takada, a lowlife, and his friends steal his bike and destroy it, in a series of events that ends up with Koji stabbed by him, he decides to visit Ushijima, and ask him to loan money to Koji,...

Smuggler aka Sumagurâ: Omae no mirai o hakobe

Written by Katsuhito Ishii, Masatoshi Yamaguchi and Kensuke Yamamoto, based on the manga Sumagurâ by Shôhei Manabe

Directed by Katsuhito Ishii

Japan 2011 Fantasia imdb

The writers and director of Smuggler clearly watched Ichi the Killer a lot – A Lot – as kids. It’s all there: the yakuza setting, the gang war, the eccentric characters, the torture, the weird unsettling pacing, the killer who feels like he infiltrated the film from some other cinematic universe.

The difference is that nothing works as well as Ichi. Every time the film quotes Ichi, we are reminded that this film isn’t quite as good as the original. The eccentricities come across as forced, the pacing feels like a car repeatedly back-firing rather than a dangerous roller-coaster, the killer just seems out of place rather than being transgressive, and the torture becomes irritating rather than unsettling.

I can’t watch scenes involving any sort of eye trauma. Try as I might, I always squirm, turn away and/or close my eyes. Just thinking about having something long and sharp shoved violently into my ocular cavities is enough to give me nightmares for the next several thousand years. If, like me, you have trouble consuming this sort of material, then the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment in the latest trailer for Masatoshi Yamaguchi’s “Ushijima the Loan Shark” might be a little shocking. I just wanted to give you the heads up. A synopsis will help ease you into the madness: Mirai Suzuki (Yuko Oshima) becomes responsible for her mother’s debt which is owed to loan shark Kaoru Ushijima (Takayuki Yamada). To begin paying off her mother’s debt, Mirai begins working at a dating cafe. Meanwhile, Jun (Kento Hayashi) is the ambitious and greedy company president for an event group.

I almost passed this one over, simply because I haven’t heard of the manga or the television program. I’m seriously glad I changed my mind. The teaser trailer for director Masatoshi Yamaguchi’s feature-length crime drama “Ushijima: The Loan Shark” looks pretty interesting. Call me crazy — and I’m sure that you will — but I’m getting a weird Miike vibe from this one. Not his good stuff, mind you, but the V-cinema crap that nobody ever talks about. Then again, I might just be tired. Here’s what the film is all about: Mirai Suzuki (Yuko Oshima) becomes responsible for her mother’s debt, which is owed to loan shark Kaoru Ushijima (Takayuki Yamada). To begin paying off her mother’s debt, Mirai begins working at a dating cafe. Meanwhile, Jun (Kento Hayashi) is the ambitious and greedy company president for an event group. To borrow money,...

A few days ago, a teaser trailer for Masatoshi Yamaguchi’s Ushijima the Loan Shark was uploaded to YouTube and embedded on the movie’s official website.

Based on a manga by Shohei Manabe, the movie brings back the primary cast and crew from the 2010 TV drama adaptation along with a few new additions.

Takayuki Yamada stars as a loan shark named Ushijima who charges predatory interest rates and hounds anyone unfortunate enough to owe money to his black market group, Kaukau Finance. Yuko Oshima of the pop idol group AKB48 plays Mirai, a woman who was forced to borrow money to pay off her mother’s massive gambling debts. Now faced with a mounting debt of her own to Ushijima, Mirai is forced to take a job at a “dating cafe” and starts to consider selling her body as a quick way to earn cash. Meanwhile, a good-looking dancer...