Graveyard Of Honor (1975)

I had read good things about Kinji Fukasaku's Graveyard Of Honor (1975) and tried to search it out for viewing. Turns out the first attempt I accidentally saw Takashi Miike's 2002 re-make, which admittedly has it's own merits. Fukusaku's film stands out for a number of reasons-the gritty documentary-like style (that he also sued in The Battles Without Honor and Humanity), the hand-held camera used in action scenes, and the fact that the main protagonist of the film was very much an anti-hero. I'm not sure if the anti-hero trope had been explored very much by 1975, but in this film Rikio Ishikawa (base don true life yakuza-played with animal intensity by Tetsuya Watari) is something of a psychopath without any regard to anyone else than himself. Once he is ousted for attacking his boss, he is banished to Osaka where he picks up a drug habit. Furthermore, Hanjiro Nakazawa's impressive widescreen cinematography has loads of atypical tilted camera angles and the unusual occasional use of sepia and freeze frames. Also, Toshiaki Tsushima's rousing score adds to the intensity of the saga. It is an inspired portrait of a dangerous criminal with no regard for others.