Aware that part 3 (also reviewed) was actually the first in a two part storyline, I started looking forward to seeing how the makers would link them both together. Learning from taking a quick look at the sleeve that this had originally been planned as the franchise final, I excitedly changed tactics and went into battle.
View on the film:
Featuring in-depth interviews where crew members look back at the first 4 films, Arrow present a great transfer,which has a soundtrack which roars with gunfire, and shines on a print with a fine level of film grain.
Each believing that this was the final, (the studio had other ideas-some things never change) returning lead actor Bunta Sugawara, composer Toshiaki Tsushima, cinematographer Sadaji Yoshida, writer Kazuo Kasahara & directing auteur Kinji Fukasaku gather together for the final time, and deliver a across the board stellar presentation.
Going right back to what was his main aim for the franchise to explore,for what would turn out to be the last in the series he would write, the screenplay by Kazuo Kasahara lines all the gangs in a stark generational divide of a introduction.
Kasahara places them all in the within the context of what he had called "A youth who had trained in the military tradition, but were too young to have actually gone to war." as Japan's attempt to fully progress from the ruins of the war with the upcoming Olympics and a booming economy,leading to police being forced to finally take a hard line with those who ruled the streets as loyal foot soldiers , finding themselves in the wilderness.
Locking Hirono in a subtly brittle full circle, with his bare feet naked from any of the luxuries he had gained, with sounds of a whistling snowstorm from a broken window signalling a new league in power, as faceless authority walks towards him.
Placing everyone on the edge of extinction as a trigger to unrelenting street warfare, Kasahara throws them out a lifeline, in concluding the leaders of each gang treating the underworld as a business which had started to be rooted in part 3, (also reviewed) Having started as loose truces, Kasahara brilliantly takes the underworld into the mainstream with the corporatism sweeping the country, washing the increasing professionalism of the gangs out, and them being crushed by the corporate image leading Japan to the Olympics.
Powered by the deep grooves of Toshiaki Tsushima's score, director Fukasaku and cinematographer Yoshida continue to build on the usage of natural light which had been most prominent in part 3, drawing a brittle Neo-Noir atmosphere of blood splattering the camera, as the unsteady warmth which had temporarily united them, shatters to slivers as they all get forced to the wilderness.
Believing this to be the final moment of the saga, Fukasaku takes the gangs out by taking his distinctive Japanese New Wave fluid camera moves to a hyper-stylised level, attacking the street gangs with dazzling freeze frames, Dutch angles, and rapid-fire whip-pans crash landing on the bloody aftermath each gang leaves on the streets.
Entering with the belief that this would be the last shot fired, Bunta Sugawara gives a outstanding, layered performance as Hirono, who still has a passion to fight for his spot, but carries a world weariness from years of blood shed,in a battle without honour and humanity.
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