Yakuza Wolf (1972).
Sonny Chiba has long been a cinematic blindspot for me, and with the release of Shout Select’s new Sonny Chiba Blu-ray Collection, I aim to right that wrong. Like many people, my first exposure to Sonny Chiba was not in a Japanese film…in fact, Chiba wasn’t in the film at all. It was 1993’s True Romance, a film in which Christian Slater’s Clarence takes his muse, Alabama, to see a Sonny Chiba triple feature: The Streetfighter, Return of the Streetfighter, and Sister Streetfighter. My first glimpse of Chiba on screen was in Tarantino’s Kill Bill, playing legendary swordsmith Hattori Hanzo…but the first time I saw Kill Bill, I had no idea the influence that Chiba had on my favorite filmmaker.
For those unfamiliar, Sonny Chiba was a Japanese actor who starred in over 125 films, most of them in the crime or martial arts genres. He was prolific, sometimes filming 7 or 8 films in a year. He won numerous awards in Japan for his acting, and he’s most well known for his role as Takuma Tsurugi in the Streetfighter series. Shout Select’s collection boasts seven Sonny Chiba films - Yakuza Wolf, Yakuza Wolf 2: Extend My Condolences, Bodyguard Kiba, Bodyguard Kiba 2, Shogun’s Shadow, Samurai Reincarnation, and finally the epic Swords of Vengeance, a 160 minute long adaptation of Japan’s most epic myth, “The 47 Loyal Retainers”. I cracked it open and started with the first film in the set, Yakuza Wolf.
Like most films, I went into this completely blind without knowing what to expect. Right from the jump, you know what you’re getting into as we open on a woman’s breasts as she rides a Japanese man in bed. As they roll over, the moans of pleasure stop suddenly, and blood squirts out from the couple. As we pull back, we can see that someone shoved a sword in the man’s back, skewering both people. This is Chiba’s Himuro.
The story of Yakuza Wolf is familiar for anyone who’s seen a lot of gangster films or played any gangster-related video games. A savvy gunslinger pits two rival factions against one another for personal gain. The Kansas City Shuffle. As tropey as this sounds, you probably won’t care, because the movie is all kinds of fun. Chiba, dressed in a black brimmed hat and duster is essentially a mix of Yojimbo and Django. He’s come to settle the score with the Yakuza gangs who brutally murdered his father and sold his sister into prostitution. To do this, he starts orchestrating killings of gang members, blaming each murder on the other gang until the feud reaches an inevitable boiling point. He’s essentially the Grim Reaper, a force that cannot be stopped and cannot be reasoned with. Unlike many of his Western counterparts, Himuro has no honor - he’s simply out for blood. He’s the kind of guy who tells you you’re free to go and then shoots you in the back. The full title of this film is Yakuza Wolf: I Perform Murder, and it definitely lives up to its title.
The film is an extremely over-the-top sleazefest, a collage of never ending smut and violence, which is right up my alley. The amount of nudity surprised me a bit, a far cry from most Japanese films I’ve seen, as they tend to lean on the conservative side when it comes to the female body. In addition to the sex scenes, there’s also a few scenes of rape and attempted rape and another scene when Chiba goes to a whorehouse to rescue his sister. There are plenty of fight scenes and shootouts as well, and although they’re not as blood splattered as some of his other films, they’re still wildly entertaining. Filled with guns and swords, the camera jolts, pans, and zooms while big battles are happening, putting you right into the action, even if it does obscure the goings on a bit too much for my taste. After Himuro kills one of the bosses in a tire yard, the boss’s henchman stands over his body and laments - “Maybe I’ll be next. Maybe we deserve to die.”, a clear influence on Budd’s chat with Ellie Driver in his trailer in Kill Bill Volume 2, questioning his mortality as the Bride closes in on her deserved retribution. “Maybe she deserves her revenge. And maybe we deserve to die.”
This film wears its influences on it’s sleeve. If the comparison to Django wasn’t clear enough with Himuro’s look, it becomes much clearer later on in the film as we see him head into the climax with two mangled hands and at some point, a machine gun is hidden inside of a coffin. The film even boasts a score reminiscent of Ennio Morricone’s iconic Spaghetti Western tunes.
I had a really good time with this film, but acknowledge that it’s not going to be for everyone. If you like the sleazy, violent revenge thrillers, this is a solid choice. It’s also a great intro to Chiba for newcomers, like a mix of Japanese Charles Bronson and Bruce Lee, his contemporary that some of his other films would attempt to replicate, but with a much more brutish martial arts style. The picture looked really good, I’m not sure what the restoration was sourced from - a little online sleuthing tells me it’s probably from around 2015, but I was happy with the look on the OLED. The sound is a DTS: HD mono track which sounded good. I watched it in Japanese with English subtitles.
