The gun in the spotlight here is an automatic rifle purchased by Togawa (Joe Shishido), a felon whose early release from prison is engineered by some shady "bosses" so he can pull off a major robbery. In exchange, they promise to pay him enough money to get surgery for his wheelchair-bound sister. Togawa and three others come up with a surefire plan for hijacking an armored truck carrying 120 million yen. They get the money but - you guessed it - everything unravels and goes to hell.
Perhaps Togawa should have heeded the warning that came with the gun (which had been taken off an American soldier): only aim it if you intend to kill because in the blink of an eye, the target will be filled with seven bullet holes. And as the betrayals and double crosses are piled one on top of another, the body count rises.
In addition to the earlier Kubrick heist-gone-wrong film, the story also harkens back to the Humphrey Bogart picture directed by Raoul Walsh High Sierra (1941), with its downward-spiraling tale of an ex-con taking one last job to help a crippled young woman. That one doesn't turn out so well either.
The U.S. occupation of Japan, while not figuring strongly in the plot, makes for an interesting background. There is, of course, the U.S. Army-issue weapon of the title. After the robbery, the armored vehicle is hidden in a warehouse previously used by American forces, and several buildings bear the scars of war. One of the characters runs a jazz bar frequented by Black GIs, and U.S. jets occasionally roar overhead. While the ongoing American presence, nearly two decades after the war, is never directly blamed for any of the events that take place, the overwhelming impression is of a defeated and drastically changed country whose citizens have few options for sustaining a decent life.
Director Takumi Furukawa keeps the story barreling along with enough energy and style to eclipse the logic problems in the plot. While never listed among the greats of Japanese cinema, Furukawa was a handy director for hire who could be counted on to turn out popular movies, many of them for Nikkatsu, the studio known for off-beat crime dramas and action movies geared towards the emerging youth market of the 50s and 60s. Furukawa's best-known work was also his debut; Season of the Sun/Taiyo no kisetsu (1956). That film is remembered chiefly as the first film of actor-singer Yûjirô Isihara, known as the Japanese Elvis for his immense popularity with young audiences.
By the time Cruel Gun Story was released, Furukawa was considered more or less past his prime. He made one last picture for Nikkatsu in 1965 before moving to Hong Kong and, under the name Kao Mei Tai, directing two films for the country's largest studio, Shaw Brothers, popularizers of the kung fu genre.
The star of this picture, something of an icon of 60s cool in his home country, is Jô Shishido (billed here as Joe), a Nikkatsu discovery who made his name in crime pictures like this. If you think his face appears rather oddly "cheeky," it's because he undertook plastic surgery in the mid-1950s to achieve the distinctive chipmunk effect. Why is anyone's guess, but it certainly made him stand out from other actors working in his time.
If you think the title is nuts, get a load of the ending, an ironic twist-of-fate climax too wacky to give away here. Suffice to say, it lends extra punch to the title's "cruel." As author and graphic novelist Jamie S. Rich says in his "Criterion Confessions" essay, "the ultimate cruelty is for a man to become everything he hates."
Director: Takumi Furukawa
Producer: Hideo Sasai (credited as "Planner") Screenplay: Hisatoshi Kaî, Haruhiko Ôyabu
Cinematography: Saburô Isayama
Editing: Masanori Tsujii
Art Direction: Toshiyuki Matsui
Music: Masayoshi Ikeda
Cast: Joe Shishido (Togawa), Chieko Matsubara (Rie), Tamio Kawaji (Takizawa), Yuji Kodaka (Shirai), Minako Katsuki (Keiko)
By Rob Nixon
