A Colt Is My Passport (1967) No quibbling here. If nothing else, this film has the best title we've come across all year, hands down.........
Try using that line with the TSA the next time you fly abroad......heh, heh, heh........
The movie's also one the best collisions of multiple styles of international filmmaking we've seen all year.....(and visitors to this blog know how hard we try to seek out the weirdest cinema from every far corner of the globe......)]
If you've never seen a rough 'n tough, hard boiled Japanese gangster movie, this one's a good place to start.
Like other films in the genre, it's shot in glorious black-and-white and widescreen......(the screen ratio becomes important when four or more gangsters space themselves out for the shootouts....)
The first startling aspect, given the film's Japanese origin, is the music score........a precise imitation of Ennio Morricone's spaghetti western scores, complete with a whistled tune you can't get out of your head.
This makes artistic sense, once the film itself begins.......it contains a riot of influences......Sergio Leone westerns, American noir, casual French New Wave (a la "Breathless") and of course it's very own homeland brutality and a life-is-cheap mindset.
The next thing that'll catch your eye: the film's one-of-a-kind tough guy played by Joe Shishido.
He's stoic as Bogart, cool as McQueen, violent as Bronson......and looks as if he's got tennis balls stuffed into his cheeks.......honest.
Shishido's cheeks, making him appear like a hamster at feeding time, came from his own decision for facial surgery to make him look distinctive.
Uh....well....mission accomplished. We can safely say we've never seen anyone like Joe in any action-crime movie we've ever watched. Or in any movie.....period.
Once you get used to Joe's chipmunky cheeks, sit back and enjoy the movie, which is a fast-paced blast. Shishido and his young driver-wingman are hired by a gang kingpin to assassinate a rival kingpin.
That they do, but in the midst of their escape, the two surviving kingpins form a peace treaty alliance.........the terms of which include death to Shishido and his best bud.
That's all you really need to know as the bullets and fists fly freely.......leading up to a visually stunning showdown between the small army of gangsters and Shishido, who's armed himself with a big ass shotgun and a nice chunk 'o dynamite.
All we can say is........Banzai, baby......and keep up that whistling faux-Morricone melody all the way.......
4 stars (****) . If you love dipping into international cinema, stuff your cheeks with enough favorite snacks to resemble Joe Shishido and have a fine time with this one.
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