Hideki Takahashi stars as Tetsu, a Yakuza hit man who, as the film opens, has been marked for death by the partners of his most recent gangland victim. When Tetsu's would-be art student brother, Kenji, kills one of the vengeful gang members, the brothers attempt to stowaway on a freighter. Unfortunately, they're immediately set up by a shifty con-man who runs off with their money. This leads to their taking jobs at a construction site in order to earn more getaway cash. Later, when the con-man resurfaces in cahoots with a gang that wants to take over the site, an outrageously stylish fight ensues. Rest assured that tons of people get taken out by cold Japanese steel, and you get to see it in long takes, from numerous outre angles.
Tattooed Life is probably more interesting when viewed in the context of Suzuki's entire career. From the late 1950s until 1967, he worked as a hired hand for Nikkatsu studios, which cranked out down-and-dirty Yakuza pictures and soft core sex films. Suzuki, however, rose above the cheap theatrics of his employers, even when he was forced to direct pictures with titles like The Nude and the Gun. His flamboyant visual style was so distinctive, he came to be viewed as a troublemaker by the higher-ups at Nikkatsu...which, given their lowbrow expectations, he pretty much was.
After several years of consistently fine, highly inventive work, Suzuki started mocking the genre itself. In due course, he dismissed with narrative logic altogether, choosing instead to construct bizarrely nihilistic pieces of free-flowing pop art. Visionary or not, he was eventually fired by the studio.
But his story didn't end there. After being banished to the relative wasteland of television for over a decade, he resurfaced in 1977. In 1980, he was fully vindicated by the release of his masterwork, Zigeunerweisen, a disturbing dreamlike vision that purported to be about Japan¿s struggle for identity in the 1920s. The film won a prize at the 1981 Berlin Film Festival, and ended up being the first installment in Suzuki's widely-hailed "Taisho Trilogy." Zigeunerweisen was later voted the best Japanese film of the 1980s by that country's film critics.
Home Vision Entertainment includes virtually nothing in the way of extras on Tattooed Life's DVD (all you get is a Suzuki filmography), but they should still be applauded for putting a pristine digital transfer of this satisfying cult picture on the marketplace. The precise, widescreen image can't be faulted, although the tinny soundtrack is distracting at times. If Suzuki's iconoclastic story interests you, and you've yet to see any of his work, this may well be the place to start.
For more information about Tattooed Life, visit Home Vision Entertainment. To order Tattooed Life, go to TCM Shopping.
by Paul Tatara
