Wannabe actor, Kinuta (Tsumabuki Satoshi) takes on a job as a mover - one who gets rid of inconvenient corpses - after his debt is bought out by an underground banker. He joins Joe (Masatoshi Nagase), a hard-boiled, laconic veteran of the trade, and an older chatterbox of a man who goes only by the moniker Gramps (Gashuin Tatsuya). Meanwhile, two legendary assassins, Vertebrae (Ando Masanobu) and Viscera (Ryushin Tei), are hired by the Chinese to deal with a Yakuza boss, Tanuma. Joe's team is tasked with disposing the bodies after the bloodbath that ensues. That's the first time their path will cross with the assassin's, but certainly not the last, because the angered Yakuza are now aiming for Vertebrae and Viscera's heads...
This is the premise of Ishii Katsuhito's 2011 movie Smuggler, based on Manabe Shohei's manga. The director assembled a pretty impressive cast - apart from the already mentioned, we'll see Mitsushima Hikari, Matsuyuki Yasuko and Kohinata Fumiyo with cameo appearances by several familiar faces.
When I sat down to this one, I expected a movie akin to Samehada Otoko to Momojiri Onna, with its comic-book violence and Pulp Fiction-like dialogues. This one however is noticeably darker, grittier and brutal then Samehada..., falling halfway to Kitano's Outrage with its realistic depictions of violence and gang power struggles. There will be skulls cracking in slow motion and lengthy, detailed torture scenes - the movie is not something to watch to the dinner.
I'm on fence with this one. For one thing, it's a well made piece of cinema, but the excessive violence left me twitching for a substantial part of the movie. Certainly there are people it will appeal to, for me it was too much. I find the more quirky Ishii, like Cha no Aji or Naisu no Mori, far more enjoyable.
My point for the movie
Among many cameo appearences by such Ishii veterans as Kiyokawa Hitoshi, Morishita Yoshiyuki and Terajima Susumu, there's also an appearence by Osugi Ren and Matsuda Shota as a pair of policemen - much like Tsumabuki's own appearence with Oguri Shun in Surely Someday. What's with all the policeman cameos in Japanese movies? Yoji Tanaka (another one from Samehada... cast) must have made it his hobby - I remember him from Udon, and looking at his imdb page, he must have scored a good three or four by himself. I have a hunch that I might have seen some odd policemen somewhere else too, but I can't pinpoint the titles of the top of my head
What are your feelings on Smuggler? Alternatively, have you seen any suspicious policemen around here somewhere?
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