I know Fukasaku is supposed to be kind of a big deal in Japan. Or at least, he certainly seems to win a lot of Academy Awards over there. Maybe he's a kind of Ron Howard type figure who is just immediately nominated for every other thing he does. I mean, I didn't really like Battle Royal. Except for Beat Takeshi. Fall Guy is okay. I guess what I've seen of the Yakuza Papers seemed okay. I dunno. They were a little tough for me to follow but certainly were directed in a cool enough way. Either way Blackmail is My Life caught me for its title... not the director. And I really liked the concept. Or maybe the construction of the concept. Well, there was a lot I liked about the film, despite how it mostly just chugs along. It doesn't really do much to catch you by surprise. The film is pretty exposition heavy, and in this case, the exposition actually does clear things up. I get easily thrown by Yakuza movie exposition and for some reason it sets me up to get a little lost by the sheer amount of info that gets thrown at you. Despite the mediocre bits of the film, there's a lot I did like. There's a kind of fun that's pervasive through the whole movie. A kind of glee in Blackmailing. It seems to arrive in the movie as a kind of just common sense gesture. And the "gang" are consistantly labeled as "punks" which I suppose is true. They're like Punks in suits. I suppose that tone is what kept the film interesting for me. It didn't really matter that I had seen this movie a million times before because it was fun to watch these people throw figurative and literal maltov cocktails all around the place.
This guy is about to fall asleep mid-sentence.
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