Tag: Miyuki Ono

Hong Kong Paradise (香港パラダイス, Shusuke Kaneko, 1990)

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A tour guide on her maiden voyage finds herself swept into intrigue in Shusuke Kaneko’s madcap caper, Hong Kong Paradise (香港パラダイス). Effectively a Japanese take on mo lei tau nonsense comedy, it’s also a commentary on Japan at the tail end of the Bubble era as the heroine dreams of an exciting world of travel only to find herself shepherding a collection of mostly elderly retirees whose most pressing concern is finding the duty free shop.

Mamiko (Yuki Saito) wanted to go Paris, but according to her boss she’s not really the type, so he’s sending her to Hong Kong instead. Everyone keeps remarking on the fact that she looks just like a fugitive princess, Yoko Kitashirakawa, who eloped with the man she loved to escape from an arranged marriage with a member of the imperial family. Mamiko has also, apparently, recently broken up with a boyfriend which might explain her desire for travel, as the film flirts with the idea she might really be Yoko enjoying a kind of Roman Holiday and not wanting to return to her constrained life as an aristocrat. But on the plane over, she ends up running into Ando (Tsuyoshi Ihara), a man who’s on the run after committing a heist in which he stole a pair of golden chess pieces as part of an insurance scam.

The golden king and the queen who end up getting separated are a representation of frustrated romance as various parties try to get them back together for different reasons. Mamiko evidently took a liking to Ando, but sadly he is soon killed, leaving her to be rescued by Oishi (Kaoru Kobayashi), a man of dubious motivations. Having lost her memory after being press-ganged into being the subject at a hypnotism show, Mamiko must once and for all re-establish her identity by finding her way through the conspiracy while slowly falling for Oishi despite his irritating qualities. In order to find the treasure, Oishi lies to her, telling Mamiko that she’s Yoko while she’s also chased by a man claiming to be a police officer and Hong’s goons who are convinced that she knows where the chess pieces are.

For the criminals, and perhaps for us too, the missing king and queen are a kind of MacGuffin, but they link back to another tragic love story. Believing that Mamiko is Yoko, Mrs Yang (Keiko Awaji) sympathises with her predicament acknowledging that love across the class divide is never easy. The love of her life was an English prince called Charles, incongruously played by an American in the opening and closing voice over, whom she met thanks to her father’s work as a diplomat. Times being what they were (and perhaps are), she knew they could never marry. Oishi tries to trick Mamiko by playing on her sympathy, claiming that the chess pieces were a gift for Mrs Yang from the man she loved in an effort to get Mamiko to help him find them without realising that he has actually stumbled on the truth.

Hong Kong then becomes a place of romance not unlike the Paris of Mamiko’s imagination in being the paradise of a tragic love story even if in reality the chess pieces were “stolen” as part of an insurance fraud scam which is about as unromantic as it’s possible to get. Nevertheless, princess Yoko apparently got a happy ending, marrying an ordinary person even if there are many people who think she’s crazy for turning down the opportunity to become a member of the imperial household. Mamiko’s occupation as tour guide, or tour conductor as she keeps reminding the participants, is largely unromantic too, mostly consisting of shuttling disinterested guests from one tourist spot to another which is to say it’s not so much broadening her horizons as narrowing them.

But in any case through her zany adventure she does perhaps get to experience the romance of life in being pulled into unlikely intrigue and fighting to reunite the separated king and queen on a symbolic and spiritual level beyond the simply physical. “It doesn’t matter who I am,” she eventually reflects on embracing her liberated anonymity and enjoying the thrill of the chase, while paradoxically rediscovering her identity in the process. Critics at the time objected to the nonsensical plot and frequent tonal shifts, but they are, of course, a key element of mo lei tau and what gives the film its zany, madcap charm as the heroine careers from one ridiculous situation to another all while falling in love.

Danger Point: The Road to Hell (Danger Point: 地獄への道, Yasuharu Hasebe, 1991)

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A pair of hitmen find themselves conflicted when their latest target dies gripping the photo of an innocent-looking nurse. Who was this man, what’s his relationship to the woman in the photo, and why did he have to die? Asking questions is taboo when you’re a hired killer, and you’re probably better off not knowing anyway, but there’s something that’s bugging veteran executioner Joji (Jo Shishido) and it’s not just the missing 20 million dollars.

Nikkatsu veteran Yasuharu Hasebe’s V-Cinema noir Danger Point (Danger Point: 地獄への道, Jigoku e no Michi) is a classic tale of nihilistic fatalism in which the bond between the two assassins is tested by the intervention of greed and mystery. Shishido’s Joji is the more old-fashioned of the pair yet fascinated by the mystery behind Sakai’s death, not necessarily wondering if he bears any culpability but confused about why he had to die despite not actually having the missing money. This puts Joji partially at odds with the younger Ken, a more dynamic and less morally ambivalent figure played by the contemporary star Show Aikawa who’d come to represent for V-Cinema what Shishido once had for Nikkatsu action. Together, the chase the various clues they’ve been given looking for the person behind the job and, of course, the missing money.

But the money presents a problem too. Ken begins to wonder if Joji will abandon him and take the prize for himself, though that doesn’t seem to be something that Joji is actively considering. The relationship between the two men is more brotherly than paternal, though Joji does scold Ken for his treatment of Yumi (Nana Okada), the nurse from the hospital and their key witness. He beats and sexually assaults her, though it’s less his lack of chivalry that Joji criticises than the wisdom of bringing a woman into their business. He’s suspicious of Yumi in a way Ken does not seem to be, though they both agree that eventually she’ll have to go before she does them any harm because now she knows too much.

Ultimately, the money turns out to be from a bank job in the Philippines that the American criminals were hoping to convert to US dollars in Japan, though predictably everyone wants the whole amount for themselves, not least Joji and Ken along with the kingpin’s horse-loving girlfriend Saeko (Miyuki Ono) who is playing her own side of the game. Neither Saeko nor Yumi do very well out of this particular affair and are each constrained by the men around them. While Yumi was apparently seduced and abandoned by corrupt cop Sakai, Saeko is hemmed in by her gangster boyfriend Takamura (Hideo Murota) and seeks escape through stealing the money with the help of Sakai, one way or another, at least. Though this world doesn’t seem to want to let either of them have it while the  men fight over the spoils in a desperate struggle to assert dominance over the situation.

As the ironic “Dead End” sign at the film’s conclusion implies, however, that chasing money is a fool’s errand and leads only to hell. A chase past the no entry signs into an industrial complex suggests that this world is not quite fully formed or in the process of falling apart. The ironic and strangely obvious product placement for Perrier sparkling mineral water might hint at a more sophisticated world the hitmen are on one level trying to inhabit, but in other ways their presence is incongruous. They belong to an earlier time as does this hidden world of bank robberies, smuggled cash, criminal gangs and fixers that seem out of place amid the tail end of the Bubble era. Or in that sense at least, perhaps it’s Japan heading for a crash desperately chasing the riches that seem only slightly out of reach. Nevertheless, there’s a genuine sense of mystery that leads Ken and Joji to their final destination in which they discover that it might not be greed that does for them after all, but in an odd way, love. Their desire for togetherness and fear of separation in the end can have only one conclusion and as much as it is the money that leads them to their doom, it’s loneliness and brotherhood that eventually seal their fate.