Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards! (DVD)

Assigned a standard Yakuza film in the hardboiled vein pioneered at Japan’s famed Nikkatsu Studios, director Seijun Suzuki (Branded to Kill) and his frequent leading man Jo Shishido used 1963’s Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards! to flip the Japanese gangster film genre on its ear.

A rapid fire gun heist, credits with an infectious jazz pop score, and a wide-screen close-up of a burning car announce Detective Bureau 2-3 as the film that would both lampoon and redefine Asian crime films for an irreverent new decade of garish panache and ultra-violent cool. The story follows police detective Tajima (Shishido), who, tasked with tracking down stolen firearms, turns an underworld grudge into a bloodbath -- while Suzuki transforms a colorful potboiler into an on-target send-up of cultural colonialism and post-war greed. “This isn’t an American TV series,” one of Tajima’s doubting subordinates tells the sharkskin-suited, super suave sleuth.

Anarchic, breakneck paced, darkly comic, and stylish to the extreme, Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards! was a movie unlike anything audiences had ever seen. It would cement Suzuki’s fervent popularity at home and heralded his imminent cult status worldwide.

1963 Japan 88 min. Color In Japanese with optional English subtitles
Letterboxed (2.35:1) Enhanced for 16x9 TVs

a NIKKATSU production a film by SEIJUN SUZUKI DETECTIVE BUREAU 2-3: GO TO HELL BASTARDS!
JO SHISHIDO REIKO SASAMORI TAMIO KAWACHI NOBUO KANEKO ASAO SANO and KINZO SHIN
cinematography by SHIGEYOSHI MINE lighting by KYOSUKE YOSHIDA art direction by TAKEHARU SAKAGUCHI edited by AKIRA SUZUKI
music by HARUMI IBE screenplay by GAN YAMAZAKI based on a novel by HARUHIKO OYABU produced by SHOZO ASHIDA directed by SEIJUN SUZUKI
© 1963 Nikkatsu Corporation