Film: Battles Without Honor & Humanity
Running time: 99 mins
Director: Kinji Fukasaku
Starring: Bunta Sugawara, Hiroki Matsukata, Kunie Tanaka, Eiko Nakamura, Tsunehiko Watase
Genre: Crime/Drama
Country: Japan
Region 1 release.
In the bombed out shell of post World War Two Hiroshima, crime is king. The poor, malnourished masses swarm around black market goods, clamouring for even a single handful of rice. American soldiers patrol the streets, uncontrolled, unchecked. G.I.s chase down and rape women in broad daylight in the middle of the street as passersby turn a blind eye. Streets that were once controlled by policemen have fallen prey to the yakuza. The only law is that which you can enforce with a gun or a katana, and the streets run red with the blood and sick of street justice. In this hellish environment, a new breed a Japanese gangster emerges. Unfettered by tradition, undeterred by the status quo, they build a new empire on the bodies of drug addicts, extortion, and impromptu assassinations. These are the new filth, the new law, the new order. They are the yakuza of Kinji Fukasaku’s Battles Without Honor & Humanity.
Following the growth of the yakuza in post-war Hiroshima, Battles Without Honor & Humanity is a sweeping film that spans over ten years. The audience is introduced to each principal character one by one as they seek out a meager living on the streets.
Among these desperate men is Shozo Hirono (Bunta Sugawara), a former soldier. When a local gangster assaults one of his friends, he shoots him in the middle of the street, fully aware that his actions will land him in prison.
Trapped in an overcrowded jail, Hirono helps his cellmate, a yakuza captain, escape from prison by deliberately botching a seppuku attempt. Once on the outside, the captain’s friend Yamamori (Nobuo Kaneko) bails Hirono out in appreciation. Yamamori has big dreams of a yakuza empire and subsequently starts his own family with Hirono and his close friends filling in the ranks. From here, the film follows the struggles of the Yamamori gang in its rise to power.
Their main enemies are the Doi family, a powerful yakuza gang with major territorial holdings in Hiroshima. As the conflict for territory, product, and money expands, so does the body count. It isn’t long before there is open war on the streets. But soon, Hirono becomes disillusioned with the senseless violence and bloodshed. Angry with Yamamori, who reveals himself to be an indecisive coward, Hirono must make a decision about whether or not to continue his blind loyalty to the gang. Whatever the outcome, someone must pay. Someone must die…
Inspired by the release and monumental success of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, Toei Studios tried to replicate the success with yakuza films. Of all of the pictures that were released, Battles Without Honor & Humanity is frequently cited as one of the best and most influential. The film would go on to inspire four sequels and become known as The Yakuza Papers. Director Kinji Fukasaku, most famous for his infamous 2000 release Battle Royale, fills the film with high drama and excessive violence. Gangsters are not just killed; they are brutally cut down by assassins who take the time to fill their bodies with entire clips of ammo. There are entire montage sequences of death and murder as rival yakuza clans engage in a deadly game of ‘last man standing’. And therein lays its primary problem.
While Battles Without Honor & Humanity more than fills its quota of stylized violence, it lacks in the plot department. After the first half of the film, the story breaks apart completely as characters are picked off one by one. It gets to a point where the audience has no idea what is going on or who is getting killed. All the viewer can comprehend is the film’s incisive violence. And while entertaining in its own right, the violence is largely bereft of meaning. Near the end of the film is a sequence where supporting and primary characters are killed off (not all, but many of them). Each death gets a dramatic freeze frame and a subtitle announcing their death. But the sequence is largely meaningless as the film took neither the time nor the effort to fully develop or explore these characters, their motivations, and the reasons for their execution. In effect, they are just bullet-ridden bodies.
In addition, the film seems to forget who the main characters are from time to time. There are large sections of the film where neither Hirono nor Yamamori are involved and the action and plot is delegated to minor characters. In a sense, the conflict between the yakuza gangs seems to become the primary character of the film. But after the first half of the film, when individual characters like Hirono and Yamamori are so painstakingly introduced and developed, the switch in focus seems disorganized and even slightly amateurish.
But to suggest that Battles Without Honor & Humanity is a bad film would be a mistake. As an exercise in filmmaking technique, the film soars. It pumps with a constant, vivacious energy fed by quick edits and bold camera angles. Filmed largely with hand-held cameras, the film has a gritty feel to it as if the audience is literally in the middle of the action. Energized by a pounding (although eventually slightly monotonous) score, it is hard not to feel excited.
Tight editing and frenetic pacing do not make a film great. In all, the film suffers from a mediocre screenplay that leaves the audience confused as to the action. But as a sheer piece of bloody spectacle, the film excels. Despite its flaws, Battles Without Honor & Humanity is an entertaining film. Given its massive impact on the Japanese film industry and the yakuza genre, it is required viewing for film buffs. It may lack the precision of The Godfather, but it more than makes up for it with attitude, thrills and pure style. NH
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