Cops Vs. Thugs

It seems 1975 was a busy year for director Kinji Fukasaku, he directed four films (Graveyard of Honor, Gambling Den Heist, and New Battles Without Humanity: The Boss's Head) including, Cops Vs.Thugs. Bunta Sugawara stars as Kuno, a cop with suspiciously close ties to the yakauza. He is particularly close to Hirotani (Hirokoi Matsukata), whom he let go several years prior and is his main contact within the yakuza. Things begin to change as new blood is brought in to combat the yakuza, a young brash officer, Kaida (Tatsuo Umemiya) is put in charge of the investigation into shady land dealings with the yakuza-his first line of order is to separate those cops with close ties to the yakuza so that he can help undermine a yakuza land deal that will be taken over by a straight corporation. The end result is a war with the yakuza with several causalities and when the dust settles several characters have been killed, locked up, demoted and promoted to a job with the straight company that ends up taking over the land bid. So the films seems to suggest that the old school close ties/corruption approach to dealing with the yakuza is preferable to the modern approach which results in a violent disruption of society. Furthermore, the subtext is that the police is much more concerned with communists than yakuza-perhaps because I read that the film was supposed to be set in 1963, but the overall feel is very 70s from the clothes, hairstyles, and music.