Movies: Japanese noir

In the midst of an attempt to take over his company, a powerhouse executive is hit with a huge ransom demand when his chauffeur's son is kidnapped by mistake....

Shortly after arriving in Kobe, "Jiro the Lefty", a killer with a natural talent, witnesses a man die in a crane accident which turns out to be a cover-up for a murder. Jiro soon finds himself on the run, tailed by a determined cop....

In this loose adaptation of "Hamlet," illegitimate son Kôichi Nishi climbs to a high position within a Japanese corporation and marries the crippled daughter of company vice president Iwabuchi. At the reception, the wedding cake is a replica of their...

Businessmen arrange the early release from prison of Togawa, serving time for taking revenge on the truck driver whose carelessness confined Togawa's sister, Rie, to a wheelchair. They want Togawa to hijack an armored truck loaded with 120 million ye...

A former boxer gets involved with a club hostess trying to escape the clutches of her gangster employer....

A sniper kills two prisoners in a police van, and the driver sets out to find the killer....

A youth drama set in a Japanese university which is home to a group of active, leftist students....

A gang lord hires Kamimura, a hit man, to take out a rival boss who's gotten greedy....

Japanese police detective Saburo Fujioka is suspected of corruption, demoted, and sent to the city of Kojin. Kojin is the scene of fierce fighting between rival gangs. Fujioka is assigned to investigate the death of the wife of gangster Tetsuo Maruya...

College students come up with a scam to rob a gambling house. When it comes time to collect, the money isn't there, leading the young men into even more serious crime....

Journalist Kuroki is investigating clandestine arms sales to Southeast Asia. He discovers that the point man in an arms trade was also involved in the cover-up of a murder on an American base during the Allied Occupation. The film rolls along as a su...

Udaka is a new, post-war city where corruption has already taken hold. A persistent district attorney wants to arrest and convict Katsumata, a laughing, self-confident thug. The D.A. gets an anonymous letter about the suicide five years' before of a ...

A private detective is hired to find a missing man by his wife. While his search is unsuccessful, the detective's own life begins to resemble the man for whom he is searching....

Before leaving prison, Oida uncomfortably enters into an agreement with his cell mate: in exchange for a half-share of 30,000,000 yen, he is to assassinate three strangers given to him on a list. However, upon meeting his first potential victim, Oida...

Set in post-war Japan, a group of five, four men and one woman, gathers in the basement of a butcher shop to dig up a cache of morphine buried during the war. A grimly humorous tale of twisted relationships as one by one each of the group is eliminat...

A noir drama depicting the downfall of a veteran detective who hates evil and falls into its depths. Ace detective Sugai pursues Chiyo, the mistress of a man who was arrested for extortion, and takes advantage of her weakness. However, as his colleag...

Raizô Ichikawa reprises his role as the restaurant-cook-turned-contract-killer in this sequel to Kazuo Mori's stylish 1967 thriller A Certain Killer....

A promising post-graduate literature student is transformed into a psychotic killer following the suicide of his father and a sleazy affair by his mother with a younger man....

Koreyoshi Kurahara's ingeniously plotted, pocket-size noir concerns the intertwined fates of a desperate bank manager, blackmailed for book-cooking, and his resentful but timid underling, passed over for a promotion. The marvelously moody Intimidatio...

Based on the original novel by Tokuda Shusei, adapted by frequent Masumura scribe Kaneto Shindo, this downbeat melodrama features a battle of women for the affections and commitment of the same man, a handsome car salesman. Masuko is the number one h...