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A policeman turned detective gets an unexpected shot at redemption after being sentenced to death by a yakuza boss Kazuhiro Kiuchi’s stylish action thriller, Steel & Lead (鉄と鉛, Tetsu to Namari). A manga artist best known for creating the Be-Bop High School series, Kiuchi also made his mark on V-Cinema with genre hits Carlos and Joker. Steel & Lead has a true hardboiled sensibility and is set in a Japan which seems to be echoing New York with steam pouring into streets and taking place in a rundown urban environment.
The unnamed detective (Tsunehiko Watase) is apparently the only one in town. He falls foul of the boss of the Hamaken gang, Hamanishi (Sei Hiraizumi), after his son is murdered by a jealous lover that the detective unwittingly helped find him having taken what she said at face value, believing that she was his pregnant wife fed up with his philandering. The dead man’s actual wife was shocked by his death that she miscarried. Her son spent only 22 hours and three minutes on this earth, which is exactly the amount of time that Hamanishi gives the detective to get his affairs in order, threatening to kill his estranged 17-year old daughter if he tries to run.
The 17-year-old daughter whom the detective hasn’t seen in years is never seen and mentioned only briefly, but hints at the detective’s fall from grace after having left the police force. His estrangement from her might be why he decides to help a schoolgirl, Miyuki (Ayana Sakai), who comes to him with a request to find her missing brother, Yoichi (Terunori Miyazaki). Yoichi has a drugs conviction and suddenly disappeared a month ago while their mother is seriously ill and awaiting an operation. The detective originally turns her down, explaining that Miyuki’s brother has almost certainly fallen back into drugs and that finding him would be both expensive and potentially dangerous. Nevertheless, having accepted that he will die by Hamanishi’s hand the following day, the detective decides that his last act on earth will be to help the girl. During the course of the case, he also becomes to determined to rescue a kidnapped little boy and thereby restore his paternity vicariously despite having apparently failed to build a relationship with his biological daughter.
Meanwhile, he begins to bond with the yakuza sent to keep an eye on him, Yano (Masataka Naruse), who is slowly won over by his righteousness and bravery in the face of death as he accepts his fate while growing determined to save the children. The detective’s investigation operates as a kind of chain reaction as he interviews various people who end up giving him the name of the next person to talk to in order to find Yoichi, finally leading him to a crazed drug dealer and user Kanemitsu (Yuji Kishimoto). Effectively dragged into this dark world of drugs and nihilism as borne out by Kanemitsu’s ad hoc decision to kidnap Takashi when his father can’t or won’t pay up immediately, the detective attempts to impose some kind of order but generally finds himself on the back foot. An attempt to chase Kanemitsu down by car simply ends with them effectively swapping vehicles as Kanemitsu manages to escape with his ride and the boy inside.
Just as Hamanishi’s grandson was killed by means of a kind of chain reaction, everything happens to the detective in sequence as he ricochets from one lead to the next. The film makes good use of Tsunehiko Watase’s cinematic history in casting him as a stoical detective who quietly accepts that he will die and resolves to sacrifice himself to save his daughter as well as the two surrogate children Miyuki and Takashi. Kiuchi excels at creating a noirish atmosphere, setting most of the film night and capturing its emptiness lit only by car headlights and neon. A stylish use of slow motion also lends the action a balletic quality otherwise at odds with the ugliness represented by Kanemitsu’s amoral nihilism. Despite his promises, Kanemitsu is quick to decide the boy must die anyway because he’s seen his face and knows his name because it’s written all over his hideout. The detective’s descent into hell is neatly timed to arrive at an eventual dawn in which he returns to a recognisably more ordered world in which innocent children like Takashi and Miyuki are safe from the darkness that surrounds them.
Trailer (no subtitles)
Windows on Worlds 