Waga jinsei saiaku no toki

This is a fun little flick, a kind of retro private eye kind of thing, all very stylish and cool. It's kind of a blend of hard-as-nails gangster movie, chopped off fingers, gore and all, with a bit of Jackie-Chan-stylee daft comedy. Well worth watching, specially for anyone interested in modern Japanese culture and society, or Mike Hammer.

Okay, so we begin with the Mike Hammer parody, the office in a movie theater, and the detective (wildly overdressed) drives a Rambler. Then the mood turns serious and we're supposed to take this clown seriously after all. There was either a bad script or a director who didn't understand the script. The results are a few moments of humor, some pretty gory violence, and almost total incomprehension on my part. There may have been clever curve balls the director was throwing, and I couldn't pick up the spin of the ball. If so, ah well. But if I'm correct, this confection just isn't worth the time it takes to watch it. Good cinematography and clever "cute" ideas start the film off, but they wear out their welcome about halfway in.

Please do not mistake this film for pulp. Pulp is by definition tawdry, which this film is not. It isn't greasy. Or slapped together. Or sensational and passing and cheap. This film wasn't made to be read through like a paperback and discarded.

The style, beautiful. The lighting, meticulous. The mood made the hair on my arms stand up. Watch this film.

This and the subsequent films that followed The Most Terrible Time in My Life will most likely get lost in the deep annals of film history. But for those that got the chance to watch these films, these movies take you back to an old-school genre that seems so familiar and accessible, even if it is in Japanese.

Maiku Hama is such a silly and over the top character that you have to think this was a comedy in the making, but Hama displays rather quickly that he is a competent private eye who takes his work seriously, albeit he drives around in a rather ludicrous car. The interesting thing about this movie is that it didn't feel like the beginning to a trilogy. Instead, this is the one movie in the series that can stand alone.

I highly recommend folks watch movies that they've never heard of before, and those they come across only by chance. The results can range from real gems, to absolute stinkers, to sometimes just fun joy rides, but one way or another they may lead us down a rabbit hole of finding more, and we'll expand our purview as movie-goers. Take this 1994 release, for example. It was the luck of the draw that brought me to a film that mixes together a contemporary setting, select aesthetics and notions pulled from detective or noir stories of the 40s or 50s, sensibilities of hard violence from the 60s onward, and sparing touches of humor of the 90s. That grab bag alone catches one's attention quite swiftly, and the execution also shows itself in no time to be a blend of the earnest and the (wryly) playful. With this in mind there's much to appreciate in 'The most terrible time in my life,' to one extent or another including Hayashi Kaizo's shrewd shot composition and Nagata Yuichi's luscious cinematography; the fetching production design and art direction; the fetching costume design, hair, and makeup; and plainly vivid stunts and effects. From the use of lighting and shadow, to the black and white presentation, to the rich, varied, vibrant music of Kumagai Yoko, Urata Kazuharu, and Urayama Hidehiko, this flick bursts with flavor in many different ways, and I truly appreciate the craftsmanship, and the skill and intelligence that everyone contributed to shape scattered influences into something fresh and original.

The storytelling is a smidgen less sure-footed, perhaps, whether owing to Hayashi's direction, the screenplay he penned with Tengan Daisuke, or at times Tomita Nobuko's editing and sequencing. Whether as written or realized, some scenes and plot development are lacking in absolute clarity or cohesion, and the editing chops things up more than is necessary. In a swirl of thoughts from different decades and genres, we're given an engaging, compelling narrative of a plucky private investigator whose innocent search for a Taiwanese immigrant spins out into the nasty business of brutal gangs. The plot is marvelously smart and compelling all told, with distinct, absorbing threads that are all interesting in and of themselves - moreover including fine characters, robust scene writing, and meaningful dialogue. I just rather think that when all is said and done the picture could have been tightened and more focused, thereby rendering it more fully cogent, especially as the tone shifts somewhat roughly from beginning to end. Far more than not 'The most terrible time in my life' is excellent, and it's even better than I could have hoped when I stumbled onto it. It's just that in seeing what it mostly does so well, I also see where it falters to some degree, and the entirety isn't perfect, or as impactful as it could have been with a tad more mindfulness. Of course, for as sharp as this mostly is, at this point any question of quality is one of semantics more than substance.

The feature isn't necessarily one to go out of your way to see, but quibble as we may about the particulars, it's hard to go wrong here. Provided strong violence is no obstacle this is pretty great overall, and I'm happy to give 'The most terrible time in my life' my solid recommendation.