Available on DVD ! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat   CLICK HERE to buy from Seijun Suzuki Early Years Box-set Vol. 1: The Boy Who Came Back, The Wind-of-Youth Group Crosses the Mountain Pass, Teenage Yakuza, The Incorrigible, Born Under Crossed Stars Japanese language, English subtitles Blu-ray + DVD combo Always make sure of DVD-compatibility !!!

Young Keiko (Sachiko Hidari)  volunteers at the BBS (Big Brothers and Sisters), a private organisation dedicated to pull young ex-convicts back into society. Her first case is Nobuo (Akira Kobayashi), a young man who has been to juvenile prison twice, once for trying to strangle his dad, and who is pretty much a hothead with fits of rage. And at first, he's less than happy about Keiko meddling in his affairs. That's not to say he doesn't want to go the straight and narrow, quite the opposite, but he has no idea how to do that yet is unwilling to listen to advice, even if it's obviously well-meant, and his temper gets the better of him ever so often on top of that. He even gets violent towards Keiko a couple of times, but always stops before doing any real damage. But the less appreciative Nobuo shows himself to be, the harder Keiko works to turn him around, and she soon finds out he's actually an artist at heart, and he's still in love with his schooltime sweetheart Kazue (Ruriko Asaoka), so Keiko tries to bring them together again - with quite some success even (though it takes a while) ... but then she realizes she has fallen in love with nobuo herself.

Nobuo, who has by now started doing caricatures of tourists in the streets for a living, hasn't fully shaken his past yet, or more accurately his past life hasn't shaken him as a bunch of hoodlums eventually kidnap Kazue with the intent of selling her into prostitution - first and foremost to teach Nobuo a lesson. This of course gets Nobuo enraged, possibly past breaking point even ...

An early effort by the later genre-subverting genius Seijun Suzuki, this is actually a rather tame, not to say clichéed crime melodrama that's little more than a job-for-hire for his then-employer Nikkatsu at least at first sight. Of course, if one takes a closer look, one will find some quirks typical for the director even here, plus one can't deny the movie looks properly elegant, thanks to inventive camerawork and careful compositions - but that said, Branded to Kill it is not. But that said, should vintage Asian formula cinema be your thing (as it is mine), this is definitely good entertainment, as it's well-directed, well-played, and while the script isn't exactly original, it's well-structured and paced, so it's really worth a look!

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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