Every sovereign needs that one ultra reliable and supremely talented servant who can be called upon in desperate times. For the Dowager Empress of the Qing Empire, that man is Leng Tien-Ying – otherwise known as the Killer Constable. When a sizeable amount of gold goes missing from the Imperial Vaults, it’s Leng they call to try and get it back. However, what Leng doesn’t know is that there’s far more going on here than he could possibly have imagined and he’s about to wade into a trap so deep that you never even see the bottom.
At several points, the giant broadsword style weapon that Leng carries catches the light and appears to shine out with some kind of ethereal righteousness, yet if Leng wields the shining sword of justice he does so with a heart of ice. Early on one of his most trusted subordinates argues with him and says he intends to leave because he thinks Leng is more killer than policeman. He doesn’t take prisoners, where there’s reasonable proof of guilt he cuts the perpetrator down on the spot. At one point he tortures a suspect for information by mock drowning him in a lake while his wife and terrified children look on. When the wife complains, he hits her causing the husband to make the mistake of going for Leng which earns him the prize of getting his head cut off right in front of his family who are now left without any means of supporting themselves.
Leng cares only about the letter of the law. As the squad of policemen ride through the barren landscape, they pass through ruined towns filled with the starving and the desperate. One of the more compassionate men asks what’s happened here and if they, as policemen, shouldn’t be trying to help, but is reminded that these poor people are Hans and the policemen are Manchurians, so it’s just none of their business whether they live or die.
However, here is where Kuei’s film deviates from the accepted path. Leng’s generally bleak attitude to life is the one the film most closely identifies with. Any attempt at compassion is met with by betrayal, each act of kindness only earns retribution and being softhearted is almost another word for dying young. That is not to say the film is completely behind Leng as a hero or even as an anti-hero, he too will pay for the way he lives his life starting with realising that he alone is responsible for the deaths of the men that blindly followed him on a fruitless quest.
Killer Constable is more of a swordplay film than a kung-fu one and is filled with plenty of energetic and expertly choreographed fight sequences. The men fight in blazing heat (at one time literally), pouring rain and mud filled swamps against a suspiciously well trained gang of opponents who always seem to be lying in wait for them. The Killer Constable also seems to have something of a fetish for chopping off people’s legs which carries on right into the bloody finale with limbs flying off with oddly gleeful abandon.
As it turns out, the Killer Constable is not completely heartless, he’s just lived in this harsh world long enough to come to the opinion that the “bad” cannot be redeemed and need to be cut down like weeds so that the flowers can once again bloom. However, he, in his quest, has crossed the line and become that which he most hates. To nearly everyone else in the picture, Leng is a bad guy – the uncompromising face of the law and the knock at the door you most fear coming. In the film’s surprisingly downbeat ending he too will get what’s coming to him.
Bleak beyond measure, the only good and true thing in the cruel wold of Killer Constable is the blind daughter of one of the criminals. Kind and cheerful, she tries to help Leng as he lies wounded and is entrusted to him should her father die, yet she pays the heaviest price of all, left standing all alone in the rain waiting for the return of those who will never come home again. Far from heroic, Killer Constable is a critique of blind justice dealt out by self righteous egoists who will always discover the error of their ways far too late.
Seen as part of HOME’s CRIME: Hong Kong Style touring season.
Yoshimitsu Morita had a long and varied career (even if it was packed into a relatively short time) which encompassed throwaway teen idol dramas and award winning art house movies but even so tackling one of the great novels by one of Japan’s most highly regarded authors might be thought an unusual move. Like a lot of his work, Natsume Soseki’s Sorekara (And Then…) deals with the massive culture clash which reverberated through Japan during the late Meiji era and, once again, he uses the idea of frustrated romance to explore the way in which the past and future often work against each other.
The word “paparazzo” might have been born with La Dolce Vita but the gossip hungry newshound has been with us since long before the invention of the camera. Yojiro Takita’s 1986 film No More Comics! (コミック雑誌なんかいらない, Komikku zasshi nanka iranai AKA Comic Magazine) proves that the media’s obsession with celebrity and “first on the scene” coverage is not a new phenomenon nor one which is likely to change any time soon.
Though not a big box office hit at the time of its release, Park Kwang-su’s Chilsu and Mansu (칠수와 만수, Chil-su wa Man-su) is not only fondly remembered by its contemporary audience chiefly because of the amusing performances of its still popular leading actors, but is also credited with kicking off what would become known as Korean New Wave. Released in 1988 and set sometime in 1987, this is the new Seoul emerging into democracy after decades of military rule and looking ahead to the glory of the 1988 Seoul olympics. However, as ever, the future has not been evenly distributed and there are those who find themselves unable to climb its ladder through no fault of their own.
Despite being one of the most prolific directors of the ‘80s and ‘90s, the work of Yoshimitsu Morita has not often travelled extensively overseas. Though frequently appearing at high profile international film festivals, few of Morita’s films have been released outside of Japan and largely he’s still best remembered for his hugely influential (and oft re-visited) 1983 black comedy, The Family Game. In part, this has to be down to Morita’s own zigzagging career which saw him mixing arthouse aesthetics with more populist projects. Main Theme is definitely in the latter category and is one of the many commercial teen idol vehicles he tackled in the 1980s.
These days we think of Sion Sono as the recently prolific, slightly mellowed former enfant terrible of the Japanese indie cinema scene. Hitting the big time with his four hour tale of religion and rebellion Love Exposure before more recently making a case for ruined youth in the aftermath of a disaster in Himizu or lamenting the state of his nation in Land of Hope what we expect of him is an energetic, sometimes ironic assault on contemporary culture. However, his beginnings were equally as varied as his modern output and his first feature length film, Bicycle Sighs (自転車吐息, Jidensha Toiki), owes much more to new wave malaise than to post-punk rage.
Of all the post-war Japanese filmmakers, the one who liked to twist the knife the most was surely Oshima. No subject too taboo, no pain too raw – he liked to find the sore spot and poke at it a little, if only in the hope of encouraging an accelerated healing, albeit one which would leave a scar to remind you that once you suffered. With Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (戦場のメリークリスマス, Senjou no Merry Christmas) he takes an unflinching look at the treatment of Japan’s prisoners of war and contrasts the Japanese forces with the different attitudes of the (mostly) British soldiers held within the walls of the camp.
Never one to be accused of clarity, Seijun Suzuki’s Capone Cries a Lot (カポネおおいになく, Capone Ooni Naku) is one of his most cheerfully bizarre movies coming fairly late in his career yet and neatly slotting itself in right after Suzuki’s first two Taisho era movies, 
When you learn someone has died, suddenly everything they have ever done becomes tragic. No matter how old they were, this fact remains. Ryuji is a film which is always going to be overshadowed by the fact that its leading actor and screenwriter sadly passed away at the extremely young age of 33 from a terminal illness only days after the film’s release. Well, in actuality, the film was only “released” in a very limited sense, perhaps no one really had the heart to go on with it. However, it left its mark on all who saw it and eventually became a cult hit and influential classic on VHS. On paper, its tale is conventional – an existential yakuza drama about a man torn between conflicting desires and his own nature but on film, it’s something else.
Windows on Worlds 