Perennial Nikkatsu Studios hard-case Joe Shishido plays 'Togawa', a recently released con who is convinced by a mob boss to plan and execute an armoured car robbery, targeting 120 million yen in race track proceeds. In a typical narrative trajectory for these types of stories, he assembles his team, plans the heist, does the job, deals with the unforeseen complications, and then is double crossed, leading to a third act of reprisal and vengeance. Togawa is an interesting, ambivalent character: he's initially portrayed in a sympathetic light as the orphaned son of parents murdered by the Chinese at the end of WW2 and loving brother of an invalid sister, yet his role in the heist is to ambush and gun down the two escorting police men in cold blood. In keeping with the film's cold, evocative title ("Cruel Gun Story"), the body count is high as 'Togawa' is forced to deal with treachery within his own team, betrayal by the mob boss who hired him, as well as a corrupt ex-lawyer trying to move up in the criminal ranks. The ending is bleak and grim, but satisfying in a noir way. Well worth watching by fans of crime melodramas.
17 Reviews
I liked much of it other than the common themed ending often shown on older movies of that era
jordondave-2808513 April 2023
(1964) Cruel Gun Story/ Kenjû zankoku monogatari
(In Japanese with English subtitles)
CRIME DRAMA/ ACTION
The Japanese equivalent of "The Killing", "Riffifi" and "The Asphalt Jungle" to name a few ...starring Joe Shishido as Togawa experiencing his early release set up by the syndicate, instructs him to rob the Japanese derby, only to find out later that he and his partner were tricked and double crossed. The fourth of five movies of the Nakkatsu Noir Criterion.
I was like, kind of hoping that this Japanese heist equivalent of both American and UK movies was not going to end in the same manner as the other heist movies, if one were to watch enough of them made during that era may define it as cliche at this point.
The Japanese equivalent of "The Killing", "Riffifi" and "The Asphalt Jungle" to name a few ...starring Joe Shishido as Togawa experiencing his early release set up by the syndicate, instructs him to rob the Japanese derby, only to find out later that he and his partner were tricked and double crossed. The fourth of five movies of the Nakkatsu Noir Criterion.
I was like, kind of hoping that this Japanese heist equivalent of both American and UK movies was not going to end in the same manner as the other heist movies, if one were to watch enough of them made during that era may define it as cliche at this point.
A Bit Too Many Bangs for the Buck.
net_orders6 May 2016
Warning: Spoilers
Viewed on DVD. Restoration = ten (10) stars; subtitles = five (5) stars. Director Takumi Furukawa seems bent on breaking the Guinness Word Record for gun shots fired in a single movie! Just about every scene ends in gun fire (and many also start off with it). Intra- and inter-gang warfare provides the back drop. It looks like every available character actor was rounded up to maximize the body count. Paybacks piled atop paybacks leaves no survivors (which provides quite a nice savings to taxpayers footing the bill for incarcerations!). Acting is okay (lead actor is chubby-cheeked Jou Shishido (who under went plastic surgery to inflate his mouth to look tougher, but, at least to me, just makes him appear as an undisciplined trumpet player!)). Cinematography (wide screen, black and white), scene lighting, editing, body makeup, sound dubbing, and score are all very good. Subtitles are pretty much mandatory due to the heavy use of Kansai Ben line readings and contemporary slang. Unfortunately, translations leave much to be desired. They need a good grammatical scrub (perhaps the translator was an intern not proficient in Western dialects?) to reduce their length so as to increase their time on the screen. Good shoot-em-up ganger film. WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.
Cruel formula story..
chaos-rampant13 September 2010
Warning: Spoilers
If you came to the movies in the Eclipse Nikkatsu Noir boxset expecting something like Seijun Suzuki, you will be disappointed. There's a reason Seijun Suzuki has a reputation like he has and there's a reason Nikkatsu fretted with every movie he made and eventually fired him. Suzuki saw Nikkatsu's formula for crime potboilers for what it was and reduced it to the casual. He attacked it. He was the bright exception, and a film like Cruel Gun Story is the formula, the beaten path, and now that the Eclipse box set allows us immediate context, Suzuki seems that much more daring. He was eventually blacklisted for his transgressions for a decade and Nikkatsu staved off bankruptcy until the early 70's, so that's how that cruel story goes.
This is the heist film where a crew of low-entry criminals get together for a big job, in this case to rob an armoured car carrying racetrack money. If nothing else, at least the plans in these films are usually elaborate enough to be fun to watch them being hatched, carried out in anxiety, and fail with disastrous consequences. Not so in this case. If a non-writer was given 10 minutes and a napkin to write it down, he could have probably come up with something more plausible/intriguing than this: force armoured car with bulletproof windows to detour into dirt road, ambush, fire at the escorting police motorcycles, then hope the driver and escort inside the car will be stupid enough to run out of the safety of their bulletproof vehicle into the open to be killed and conveniently provide the safe key to the robbers. Mercifully it doesn't work that way; yet to have us a believe the robbers would stage a heist and base it on that improbable chance firmly places Cruel Gun Story in Tintin territory.
The only interesting aspect of this is that the robbers are forced to take the van to their hideout with the driver and police escort still inside. A gunfight takes place there, there's a lot of gunsmoke and sparks fly, but that semi-interesting set piece is brought to a screeching halt when someone lights dynamite and throws it inside the warehouse. Of course someone picks it up and throws it back out. It's a like a gagman from the 1920's dropped by the studio the day of shooting the scene and improvised something on the spot.
Despite what it says on the tin, these are not noir films. The Japanese did a lot of great things in their postwar cinema, but they didn't understand noir. We get a 'crime doesn't pay' finale to be sure, and if you thought Casablanca was too literal in saying the same thing in its own finale, you have to see the protagonist lying dead on a pile of money catching on fire to realize Michael Curtiz was only too subtle by comparison, but that's not what noir is about. Cruel Gun Story is basically a b/w crime flick where Jo Shishido yells and punches people randomly, someone is betrayed and comes back for revenge, yet there's no fatalism and the noir God who indifferently pulls the strings in a cold yawning universe is conspicuously absent.
This is the heist film where a crew of low-entry criminals get together for a big job, in this case to rob an armoured car carrying racetrack money. If nothing else, at least the plans in these films are usually elaborate enough to be fun to watch them being hatched, carried out in anxiety, and fail with disastrous consequences. Not so in this case. If a non-writer was given 10 minutes and a napkin to write it down, he could have probably come up with something more plausible/intriguing than this: force armoured car with bulletproof windows to detour into dirt road, ambush, fire at the escorting police motorcycles, then hope the driver and escort inside the car will be stupid enough to run out of the safety of their bulletproof vehicle into the open to be killed and conveniently provide the safe key to the robbers. Mercifully it doesn't work that way; yet to have us a believe the robbers would stage a heist and base it on that improbable chance firmly places Cruel Gun Story in Tintin territory.
The only interesting aspect of this is that the robbers are forced to take the van to their hideout with the driver and police escort still inside. A gunfight takes place there, there's a lot of gunsmoke and sparks fly, but that semi-interesting set piece is brought to a screeching halt when someone lights dynamite and throws it inside the warehouse. Of course someone picks it up and throws it back out. It's a like a gagman from the 1920's dropped by the studio the day of shooting the scene and improvised something on the spot.
Despite what it says on the tin, these are not noir films. The Japanese did a lot of great things in their postwar cinema, but they didn't understand noir. We get a 'crime doesn't pay' finale to be sure, and if you thought Casablanca was too literal in saying the same thing in its own finale, you have to see the protagonist lying dead on a pile of money catching on fire to realize Michael Curtiz was only too subtle by comparison, but that's not what noir is about. Cruel Gun Story is basically a b/w crime flick where Jo Shishido yells and punches people randomly, someone is betrayed and comes back for revenge, yet there's no fatalism and the noir God who indifferently pulls the strings in a cold yawning universe is conspicuously absent.
Very satisfying
Jeremy_Urquhart4 March 2022
Film 4/5 in the Nikkatsu Noir series, and like Take Aim at the Police Van before it, Cruel Gun Story has a great title.
This one is less noir-ish and more of a straightforward heist film than any of the films in this boxset that came before, and I was perfectly okay with that. Heist movies are always satisfying when they get the basic components right, and all the stages are executed fairly well here- the planning, the heist itself, and then the inevitable fallout and consequences.
There's some good shootouts, and Jo Shishido makes for a good lead, as he always seems to do. I wish the aftermath of the heist had been a little more engaging, or at least on par with the first two chunks of the film, but it still had a decent conclusion overall.
Easy to recommend if you want something like Stanley Kubrick's The Killing, which is another tight and satisfying black & white heist movie that I should maybe revisit some day.
This one is less noir-ish and more of a straightforward heist film than any of the films in this boxset that came before, and I was perfectly okay with that. Heist movies are always satisfying when they get the basic components right, and all the stages are executed fairly well here- the planning, the heist itself, and then the inevitable fallout and consequences.
There's some good shootouts, and Jo Shishido makes for a good lead, as he always seems to do. I wish the aftermath of the heist had been a little more engaging, or at least on par with the first two chunks of the film, but it still had a decent conclusion overall.
Easy to recommend if you want something like Stanley Kubrick's The Killing, which is another tight and satisfying black & white heist movie that I should maybe revisit some day.
Starring Jô Shishido, the epitome of Japanese cool.
planktonrules17 March 2011
"Cruel Gun Story" stars one of the weirder actors of his era, Jô Shishido. I say weird because Shishido actually paid to have surgery to give him bizarre cheeks--making him appear, somewhat, like a human chipmunk! This apparently made him quite popular in Japanese crime films (I didn't realize that Japanese criminals were cursed with this odd facial characteristic!). I've seen him in quite a few films including: "Branded to Kill", "Youth of the Beast", "Detective bureau 2-3" and "Gate of Flesh" and he is the epitome of Japanese cool.
When the story begins, you learn that Shishido's been in prison for killing a man who ran over Sashido's sister. As a result, the sister is wheelchair-bound, so Shishido felt compelled to kill the guy. Now, he's been sprung from prison early--apparently some mob boss wants him lead a team in an armored car robbery. Shishido agrees--as he hopes that the money can pay for some miracle surgery to heal her. Unfortunately, there's more to the plan than Shishido is aware of and perhaps this is NOT a good way to make a fast buck. Can our anti-hero somehow survive this bold caper? I could say more, but it would spoil the film.
This is a very taut and exciting crime film thanks to a great plot, good acting and Shishido's character--a nice mixture of coolness, machismo and, in an odd way, honor. Plus, I sure liked the very dark ending--what a finale. Overall, I'd say this is one of the best examples of Japanese noir I have seen and it's well worth seeing--whether or not you are a fan of the genre.
When the story begins, you learn that Shishido's been in prison for killing a man who ran over Sashido's sister. As a result, the sister is wheelchair-bound, so Shishido felt compelled to kill the guy. Now, he's been sprung from prison early--apparently some mob boss wants him lead a team in an armored car robbery. Shishido agrees--as he hopes that the money can pay for some miracle surgery to heal her. Unfortunately, there's more to the plan than Shishido is aware of and perhaps this is NOT a good way to make a fast buck. Can our anti-hero somehow survive this bold caper? I could say more, but it would spoil the film.
This is a very taut and exciting crime film thanks to a great plot, good acting and Shishido's character--a nice mixture of coolness, machismo and, in an odd way, honor. Plus, I sure liked the very dark ending--what a finale. Overall, I'd say this is one of the best examples of Japanese noir I have seen and it's well worth seeing--whether or not you are a fan of the genre.
Not exceptional, but not bad
gbill-7487726 July 2022
As a heist film this one is a little by-the-numbers, but there is a certain cool and conflicted angst that Joe "the Ace" Shishido brings to the role, and you can certainly do worse. He's a criminal who lives by a moral code and is looking out for his sister who has a disability, a trope akin to the hooker with a heart of gold. Naturally things don't go completely as planned during the robbery, there are betrayals, and big shoot-out scenes, all leading to a wild ending. Not a bad way to spend 87 minutes.
"Feeling safe is the most dangerous thing"
nickenchuggets26 November 2022
Warning: Spoilers
While Cruel Gun Story might not be very well known (even in its native Japan), it is arguably one of the most enthralling noir films I've seen yet and shows how countries other than America could partake in this genre. Like any good noir, it features a lot of killing, double crosses, guns, money, and an ironic ending that somehow gets you feeling sympathetic for the bad guy. While few characters in this movie are genuinely good people, the film is centered around a Yakuza (Japanese mafia) member named Togawa (Jo Shishido), who has been imprisoned for taking vengeance on a driver who crippled his sister forever. A mob boss named Matsumoto arranges for Togawa to be released, and once he's free, he starts getting his boys together for a big heist. The problem is, none of the people in Togawa's company trust him (or even each other), and the double crossing starts almost instantly. Their actual objective is to divert an armored car driving from a racetrack onto a deserted road so they can kill its guards and rob it. The vehicle is transporting 120 million yen worth of horse race bets. Togawa and his men succeed in diverting the car, and Togawa himself uses a rifle borrowed from his friend Takizawa to snipe the cops riding motorcycles escorting the vehicle. After securing the armored car, they load it (drivers still inside) into the back of a larger truck and drive to an abandoned garage. Once there, they attempt to vent carbon monoxide into the truck in order to smoke the cops out of it, which works, but one of Togawa's thugs is shot in the process. The cops show up and try to raid the garage, but since Togawa is an experienced gunman, what follows is a bloodbath. Using the keys from one of the dead cops, the money is retrieved from the armored car, but Togawa finds out that Matsumoto intends for him to die so that he doesn't receive his cut. While most of the other gangsters are killed, Togawa makes his escape through a sewer, but leaves the money behind. After being rescued, he makes his way to Takizawa's bar to find out what to do next. Through some means, Togawa is able to capture Matsumoto's son and tries to use him as bait to get Matsumoto to surrender the money. The latter and Togawa reach an agreement and promise to meet by a bridge at nighttime to trade. Togawa warns if not all the money is accounted for, he will kill his son. When the night arrives, Togawa's men (but not himself) meet Matsumoto's representative to complete the barter, but gunmen shoot at Togawa's men from the bridge and all are killed. With no choice left but to retrieve the cash himself, Togawa tracks down Matsumoto, shoots him, and takes the money back to Takizawa's place. Takizawa says how his friend has a passport to Brazil waiting for Togawa, and his sister will be sent there in about a year. Some time later, a thug working for Matsumoto sneaks into Takizawa's bar and shoots him after he learns he has secured Togawa's exile. Togawa reenters the bar, barely manages to kill the guy, and then tries to check on his friend. Takizawa mistakes him for the criminal and shoots him. Having no need for all the money he stole now, Togawa spills gasoline all over the bar and burns himself to death. I didn't think it was possible for a movie of this length to be so complicated, but there it is. I don't feel it's a bad movie, but it contains so many betrayals, characters popping up out of nowhere, and other things that explaining its story is a little bit of an exercise in futility. People in the film betray each other constantly, and are then betrayed themselves. Still, I haven't ever seen a movie focused on the yakuza yet, so I thought this was a fairly good place to begin. Japan is definitely a great setting for something like this. Badly damaged and depressing looking from its mauling in World War 2 just years earlier, the shadows and other dark visuals we associate with noir seem to come naturally here. There's also tons of firearms and gunfights, and Shishido is on the same level as someone like George Raft when it comes to toughness. He's gotten far in the criminal underworld simply because he doesn't trust anyone, and it's so much fun seeing him come out alive of (almost) every single confrontation, no matter how deadly they are. The movie's story itself also bears an uncanny resemblance to Kubrick's The Killing, as both films involve a band of criminals trying to steal money from a racetrack, betrayals, and a deeply ironic conclusion. This movie's plot may be somewhat chaotic, and there's more corpses than the end of Macbeth by the time it's over, but for a foreign crime movie, I wouldn't call it bad. It does at least show how even if criminals go unpunished by the police, they will eventually be punished by their own kind.
Well done crime story
jellopuke14 February 2022
Fairly mundane set up, criminal looking to do one last job, with fairly typical characters, but well done and with a Japanese outlook and form. Bleak and dark with some nice action and final act. Worth seeing for old Chipmunk Shishido who plays it cool as usual.
Exceptional heist noir
MissSimonetta18 September 2019
CRUEL GUN STORY is very reminiscent of Kubrick's THE KILLING: a group of motley criminals plan to rob a horse race track (or in this case, a truck transporting money from one). They believe this will be an easy pay day, the perfect crime. Unfortunately, human folly and bad luck get in the way.
While this idea has been done before, CRUEL GUN STORY is a great take on the classic tropes with its very human characters and chilly style. The action scenes are thrilling and the undercurrent of weary humanity puts this among the best of late-stage classic noir.
While this idea has been done before, CRUEL GUN STORY is a great take on the classic tropes with its very human characters and chilly style. The action scenes are thrilling and the undercurrent of weary humanity puts this among the best of late-stage classic noir.
STRONG NOIR FROM JAPAN...!
masonfisk19 December 2021
A gritty Japanese film noir from 1964. Joe Shishido stars as a recently released thief who gets a job from a Yakuza boss to pull off an armored car heist. Accepting the job & picking out his own gang (even testing them by giving them a beating to see if they would hold up under police questioning), the team is set & the crime is pulled off nearly w/o a hitch but then the inevitable double cross comes down (both by the Yakuza & his own gang) but he manages to blast his way to freedom, gaining the aid of a rival Yakuza gang when they kidnap the Capo's son but then the right hand man of the Capo decides to double cross his boss during the exchange (the son's killed) which finds Shishido w/the upper hand (recovering the loot) until they find his hiding spot right before he sets sail to South America. Will Shushido make it to the bitter end? Knowing the genre in which this film resides should give you the answer as the shade wearing anti-hero is always all business from the film's start to finish w/Shushido (who according to Eddie Muller's Noir Alley intro/outro got cheek implants so that he would be taken seriously as a distinctive actor) meting out his own brand of justice to any & everyone.
Tiresome Gun Story
ArtVandelayImporterExporter9 May 2018
Warning: Spoilers
This is just a 50s lame-o Hollywood crime caper with Japanese actors, most of whom can't act.
It even has vehicles that spontaneously catch fire BEFORE they fall off the cliff.
There is no structure to this movie. After the heist it plays like the writers were making it up as they went along.
And the shootouts, goodness they're a bunch of baloney. I've seen more realistic gun battles on old episodes of S.W.A.T.
If this were an American movie it would be watchable for camp value only.
Cruel Gun Story (1964)
mevmijaumau24 May 2015
Takumi Furukawa's movies are really obscure, ranging from noir productions to a 1956 sun tribe film Season of the Sun, one of the prime examples of the genre. In the late '60s, he made two films in Hong Kong under the name Tai Ko Mei. And that's pretty much all the available information on him. Seeing how the director isn't really a known figure, the main reason to watch his film Cruel Gun Story is for the lead actor Joe Shishido - the legendary actor in gangster films who had a cheek implantation surgery to look more suitable to his roles (dafuq was he thinking?). He's the best leading actor in the entire Nikkatsu Noir set, with a cool screen presence.
Plotwise, the movie is a racetrack money heist film, so I guess it was inspired by Stanley Kubrick's The Killing. Interestingly enough, both films have incredibly generic titles that could fit every crime movie ever made, with Cruel Gun Story being similar to films like Oshima's Cruel Story of Youth or Imai's Cruel Tales of Bushido.
The film is very dark and, well, cruel, with ironic twists of fate, double-crossings at every corner, and ending, that, although predictable, still gets its job done. The flow is ruined by the absurdly stupid twist end coming in at the last minute and some issues I have with the heist plan, but maybe the guys are just bad planners. The film's bleakness kinda comes from the social context, with the crooks' criminal choice is due to them being in a socio-economic post-war gutter, and as such, their hideout is a place ruined by U.S. troops. I guess the economic miracle hadn't yet started being felt at the time of the movie's production.
The protagonist is somewhat more honorable than his enemies and has a paralyzed sister to take care of, intending to pay her an operation if the scheme goes well. If mishandled, this plot point could easily become a lazy melodramatic device, but the movie handles it very well and Furukawa gives it another dark little twist; in the sense that although the doctors say no operation can fix the sister's legs, Shishido's character still wants it to be true, in the end, making the film's enormous body count revolve around nothing.
This movie has some flaws, particularly the absurd final two minutes, but overall it's the most entertaining film from the set so far, has Joe Shishido, a huge body count and cool noir aesthetics. It's a wonderful example of by-the-books studio filmmaking - short runtime, easy plot, a pointless romance sub-plot, and not a single minute wasted. Perfect for quick entertainment. It doesn't hurt that one of the villains resembles Groucho Marx in his autumn years.
Plotwise, the movie is a racetrack money heist film, so I guess it was inspired by Stanley Kubrick's The Killing. Interestingly enough, both films have incredibly generic titles that could fit every crime movie ever made, with Cruel Gun Story being similar to films like Oshima's Cruel Story of Youth or Imai's Cruel Tales of Bushido.
The film is very dark and, well, cruel, with ironic twists of fate, double-crossings at every corner, and ending, that, although predictable, still gets its job done. The flow is ruined by the absurdly stupid twist end coming in at the last minute and some issues I have with the heist plan, but maybe the guys are just bad planners. The film's bleakness kinda comes from the social context, with the crooks' criminal choice is due to them being in a socio-economic post-war gutter, and as such, their hideout is a place ruined by U.S. troops. I guess the economic miracle hadn't yet started being felt at the time of the movie's production.
The protagonist is somewhat more honorable than his enemies and has a paralyzed sister to take care of, intending to pay her an operation if the scheme goes well. If mishandled, this plot point could easily become a lazy melodramatic device, but the movie handles it very well and Furukawa gives it another dark little twist; in the sense that although the doctors say no operation can fix the sister's legs, Shishido's character still wants it to be true, in the end, making the film's enormous body count revolve around nothing.
This movie has some flaws, particularly the absurd final two minutes, but overall it's the most entertaining film from the set so far, has Joe Shishido, a huge body count and cool noir aesthetics. It's a wonderful example of by-the-books studio filmmaking - short runtime, easy plot, a pointless romance sub-plot, and not a single minute wasted. Perfect for quick entertainment. It doesn't hurt that one of the villains resembles Groucho Marx in his autumn years.
And the moral of the story is....
theognis-8082114 December 2021
A daring, intriguing production design is not enough to distract from the essential dullness of this genre picture. The imitation of American baseball should not necessitate a concomitant imitation of the American gangster yarn. "The Killing" and "White Heat" had this stuff right; it's derivatives here don't have the mythological backbone to make this work. Moreover, the physical violence and the caper itself strain credulity.
Tough Guys, Crime and Blood
boblipton9 May 2018
Jô Shishido is fresh out of prison and is picked to lead a crew in an armored car robbery. He needs the money for an operation for his sister, so he agrees to take on a tough crew. However, things don't go right, and there is betrayal and a chance for vengeance awaiting him.
Although the heist is well performed, I found the sheer violence, from beginning to end to be almost a parody of the form. Shishido starts by beating up his potential crewmates in order to establish... that this is one of the Nikkatsu crime thrillers, I suppose, and those are about tough guys committing crimes with plenty of bloodshed. That it does, but it offers little to the genre but Shishido in his typecast screen role, doing more of the same.... an excess rather than an advance and foreshadowing the logical end point of the dramatic form.
Although the heist is well performed, I found the sheer violence, from beginning to end to be almost a parody of the form. Shishido starts by beating up his potential crewmates in order to establish... that this is one of the Nikkatsu crime thrillers, I suppose, and those are about tough guys committing crimes with plenty of bloodshed. That it does, but it offers little to the genre but Shishido in his typecast screen role, doing more of the same.... an excess rather than an advance and foreshadowing the logical end point of the dramatic form.
Thought Godzilla was going to show up!
billsoccer19 December 2021
Warning: Spoilers
Watched this only because it was featured on TCM as a good noir. It isn't. It's your basic Japanese crime story, done badly. I usually avoid watching sub-titled films and this only confirmed my bias. The acting is straight out of any Godzilla film (If I can't convince you to pass on this one - just wait till you see how they handle the rifle!) and the plot has so many holes you'll die laughing.
cruel gun story
mossgrymk1 January 2022
Should be called "Crude Gun Story" since it's a not very sophisticated or original re-make of Kubrick's "The Killing". And Joe Shishido makes Sterling Hayden look like Daniel Day Lewis. I guess if you admire the work of its director you'll call this thing an "homage". I, however, prefer the term "cheap imitation" like so much of what was made in Japan in the early 60s.
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