Movies: Japanese noir

A Yokohama shoe executive faces a wrenching choice when kidnappers mistakenly seize his chauffeur’s son but demand the ransom anyway....

A gangster gets released from prison and has to cope with the recent shifts of power between the gangs, while taking care of a thrill-seeking young woman, who got in bad company while gambling....

When a married man begins an affair with a woman from his past, he comes to suspect her young son intends to murder him....

Gang of robbers quarrel about the loot, but when one of them gets killed, his younger brother seeks them out to ice them one by one....

A juvenile delinquent gets out of the pen and immediately embarks on a rampage of untethered anger, most of it directed at the girlfriend of the journalist who helped send him up....

After yakuza boss Kurata dissolves his own criminal empire, a rival kingpin offers a position to Kurata's top operative, Tetsuya "Phoenix Tetsu" Hondo. When the fiercely loyal Tetsu declines, Otsuka taps unstoppable Tatsuzo the "Viper", a ruthless gu...

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...

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

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

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...

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...

A top police-guard, charged with protecting a visiting politician and ruthless dictator, contends with an assassin set to kill the man....

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

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....

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...

Yoshida's first feature follows the lives of young students against a background of jazz, emptiness and boredom. The plot is fairly simple: a "good-for-nothing" from a poor background falls in love with the young secretary of his rich friend's father...

When 150 guns are stolen from Iwakuni base and two police officers are shot dead, a detective criminal tries to find out the truth....

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....

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...