The Crimson Kimono (1959) Leave it to writer-director Sam Fuller, cinema's favorite pulp fictioneer to dive head first into racial bigotry directed at Asian Americans.
Anyone expecting a quiet thoughtful think-piece drama (a la Stanley Kramer, for instance) obviously never saw a Sam Fuller movie......
Fuller, a former tabloid crime reporter and battle-hardened World War 2 combat veteran, excelled in making fast, cheap, luridly violent movies that always grabbed you by the throat in the first few minutes.
"The Crimson Kimono"s no exception, kicking off with a panicked stripper running down a Los Angeles red light district just before she's shot dead in the street.
Hot on the case are two young detectives, a whitebread stud (Glen Corbett) and a Japanese American (James Shigeta). Not just cop partners, they're also roommates with a fierce bond of having fought side by side in the Korean war.
Their investigation leads them through the Asian community and to a beautiful artist (Victoria Shaw) who's able to draw them a portrait of their prime suspect. That task not only puts her in the cross hairs of the killer, it lands her in the middle of a problematic romantic triangle with our dynamic detective duo - who both fall hard for her.
To make matters more complicated and drive a wedge in the partners' once unbreakable friendship, genuine true love breaks out between Shigeta and Shaw. And Shigeta well knows that an Asian-Caucasian coupling in the late 1950's would be subject to the unspoken but always prevalent bigotry that permeated American society.
And that's what Fuller targets here - the film doesn't hurl around a lot of racial slurs in its scenes and dialogue. But the look on Corbett's face when Shigeta reveals his love for a white woman is all Shigeta needs to see......that expression of perplexed disapproval speaks volumes and wounds him to his very core.
All of these issues play out in Sam Fuller's inimitable style - short, terse, direct-to-the-point scenes, sometimes punctuated by some startling bit of violence. This includes a vivid, pure-Fuller sequence that shows the partners' bond ripped asunder when they face each other as combatants in a Kendo competition, wielding Japanese wooden swords.
First and foremost though, Fuller's a B-movie entertainer and he brings things to gaudy conclusion with the killer chased through an Asian neighborhood parade. The guy's motive turns out as ridiculously simple but provides Corbett with a moral lesson and gives the film a corny but satisfying Hollywood conclusion....(it is still the 1950's, after all.....)
'Fast and furious' may make everyone today think of those huge dopey car movies, but those adjectives apply perfectly to the pulp pop art of Sam Fuller. If you haven't seen his films, try this one as entry into his work......you'll soon want to see them all. 4 stars (****)
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