TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A.: obsession without an iota of redemption

Photo caption: William L. Petersen in TO LIVE AND TO DIE IN L.A. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.

It’s William Friedkin Week at The Movie Gourmet, and we’re looking at three of the director’s more overlooked films. First up is his 1985 neo-noir To Live and Die in L.A., now a cult fave of noir fans. It’s a study of amoral obsession without any iota of redemption. Along with directing, Friedkin co-wrote the screenplay.

The secret service agent Chance (William L. Petersen) is consumed with tracking down the counterfeiter Masters (Willem Dafoe). Both are very dangerous men, and it’s pretty clear that no more than one of them is going to survive. Chance’s new partner Vuckovich (John Pankow) has to go along for the ride – and it’s a doozy.

Friedkin begins To Live and Die in L.A. with a thrilling set piece, involving terrorism in a highrise, that introduces Chance as a nervy stud. Then we meet Masters, and learn that he is anything but an ordinary criminal. Just when we have caught our breath, Friedkin toys with us in a scene that establishes that Chance is a reckless adrenaline freak.

The stage is now set for a manhunt, and Chance unleashes all his ruthlessness. Poor Vuckovich stands in for the audience as he and we are repeatedly shocked by Chance’s amorality, even corruption.

The car chase in Friedkin’s The French Connection remains the gold standard, but the one in To Live and Die in L.A. is also extraordinary. This one careens through LA’s freeways (including wrong way on the freeway), industrial areas and the cement channel of the Los Angeles River. The LA River has since been the site of countless movie chases, but it first was prominently featured in Point Blank and To Live and Die in L.A. may have been the river’s first car chase in a mainstream movie. All of the action is photographed by master cinematographer Robby Mueller.

Of course, along with the thrills of the chase and Chance’s astonishing behavior, we also get a counterfeiter procedural as Masters combines art, craft and greed as he prints his own faux money.

Willem Dafoe in TO LIVE AND TO DIE IN L.A. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.

This was Willem Dafoe’s first major film role, just before Platoon and The Last Temptation of Christ. Dafoe, in an understated performance, oozes menace as the smooth, but very lethal, Masters.

William Petersen inhabits Chance with none of the gruff lovability he would show on CSI. It’s a balls-to-the-wall performance. Interestingly, Petersen didn’t get high profile jobs for the next fifteen years until CSI.

Dean Stockwell is perfect as a shady lawyer. Debra Feuer, John Tuturro and the renegade filmmaker Robert Downey, Sr., also appear in supporting roles.

William L. Petersen and John Pankow in TO LIVE AND TO DIE IN L.A. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.

The ending is so dark that the studio insisted that Friedkin shoot an alternative ending, in which a main character improbably survives. Fortunately, that alternative ending was not affixed to the final cut of the film. You can view the alternative ending on YouTube, with the comments of Friedkin, Petersen and Pankow.

To Live and to Die in L.A. is available on Blu-Ray from Shout! Factory and in 4K from Kino Lorber. I’ll let you know when you can stream it or if it shows up again on TV.

FALLEN DRIVE: revenge noir with complications

Jakki Jandrell and Phillip Andre Botello in FALLEN DRIVE. Courtesy of Cinequest.

The neo-noir thriller Fallen Drive begins with some 20-somethings congregating in a suburban Airbnb ranch house, having returned to their hometown for a high school reunion. It looks like the successful Liam is really more interested in reuniting with his mysteriously estranged younger brother Dustin. Tightly wound Charlie (Jakki Jandrell) and her boyfriend Reese (Phillip Andre Botello) arrive, and it’s apparent that they have an agenda that could be more grim than drinking with high school buddies.

Soon we are enmeshed in revenge noir, in a variation of the perfect crime film. Things get more intense – and more unpredictable – as the story evolves. There are Hitchcockian touches – he suspects us.

Fallen Drive is written and directed by Nick Cassidy (who also plays Liam) and David Rice; it’s the first feature for both. A very strong screenplay elevates Fallen Drive from the paint-by-numbers thriller we see so often. Here Cassidy and Rice have made the characters complicated and added some ambiguity to the back story. There are subtle hints about the relationships of Liam and Dustin and of Reese and Charlie, and the audience is asked to fill in the blanks. You’ll never guess the two characters driving off together at the end.

There’s also a minor character who still parties too much, who could have been written merely for comic relief; but Cassidy and Rice make it clear that his alcoholism has left him immature – that’s why he behaves like a jerk.

The performances are strong. Jandrell is superb as the coiled Charlie. Donald Clark Jr. is also excellent as Dustin, who the others have always found creepy. Cassidy makes for a sufficiently smirky Liam.

An uncommonly textured revenge thriller, Fallen Drive should be a crowd-pleaser. Cinequest is hosting the world premiere of Fallen Drive.

A DARK, DARK MAN: rounding up the usual suspects in Kazakhstan

Photo caption: Daniyar Alshivnov in A DARK, DARK MAN. Courtesy of MHz.

In the Kazakh neo-noir A Dark, Dark Man, a provincial detective is stationed in a place that is remote, even by the standards of Kazakhstan. The authorities are unaccountable and utterly corrupt, and human life isn’t so much cheap as it is valueless. A boy has been murdered and wheels having no relation to justice begin to grind.

The cop is Bekzat (Daniyar Alshivnov), a smart guy whose moral compass drives him to solve the crime, not to cover it up. But he’s also practical, and he understands that he doesn’t have the power to undermine his bosses, who have decided that Pukuar, a mentally disabled local, is the suspect.

The sordid order of things is rocked by the arrival of a nosy journalist Ariana (Dinara Baktybaeva), who uncomfortably points out that 11 suspects have died in police custody in the past year, and that this murder shares convincing similarities with a series of local murders over the past decade. It appears that someone has been getting away with serial murder while the cops “round up the usual suspects”.

In a compelling performance, Alshivnov has us hanging on Bekhat’s moral decision. Which choice will he make, and at what risk? How can he survive?

Yes, this is my first Kazakh film. Director and co-writer Adilkhan Yerzhanov uses absurdism to depict the incompetence of the rural police. The violence in A Dark, Dark Man is anything but stylized – Yerzhanov makes it up-close-and-personal and messy.

Teoman Khos is superb as the innocent Pukuar, both half-witted and pranksterish, and understanding more of what is going on than it seems.

Make sure you watch the interview with star Daniyar Alshivnov (embedded below the trailer). You will be surprised.

A Dark, Dark Man is streaming on MHz. MHz has split it into 3 episodes, but it’s a coherent 2 hour, ten minute movie that is easy to binge.

STARS AT NOON: needs less sweat and more sizzle

Photo caption: Margaret Qualley in STARS AT NOON. Courtesy of A24.

In the atmospheric neo-noir Stars at Noon, it’s the early 1980s in Nicaragua, and wannabe journalist Trish (Margaret Qualley) is learning that one can not always live by ones wits. She’s hoodwinked a magazine into paying her way to write a travel puff piece, while always intending to write a political expose; that article has annoyed the government to the point of revoking her press pass and confiscating her passport. Now she’s broke, unable to pay her way out of the city’s cheapest motel and into the airport, cadging meals from hotel buffets and obsessing on how to procure some shampoo for her increasingly sweaty scalp.

What she has going for her is command of the Spanish language and having learned her way around the country, geographically and culturally. She’s mastered the alphabet soup of Central American intelligence and security entities, each nastier and more ruthlessly repressive than the last. Trish is also highly manipulative and eager to sleep with any man who might help her in any way.

She picks up the handsome Brit Daniel (Joe Alwyn) at his upscale hotel, intending to get a roll in the hay, 50 dollars US and some stolen hotel shampoo out of the encounter. When Trish finds a hidden gun in his stuff, she (and the audience) think he must be dangerous, like a hit man or an intelligence operative. When she finds that he’s also in over his head, she and he have fallen in love with each other.

He’s not dangerous to others – he’s dangerous to be with. She was in desperate circumstance, but now the two of them are desperate for their lives. It’s too late – their fates are now entangled. And they’re going to have to make a mad dash for the border.

Stars at Noon won the Grand Prixe, essentially second place at Cannes, and this must have been because of the jury’s reverence for Claire Denis, the iconic French director, and a glass ceiling-busting female filmmaker at that. As one would expect from a Denis film, Star at Noon is competently crafted, but it’s just way too long at two hours and twenty minutes. Although Qualley and Alwyn spend a lot of that time unclothed and grinding away, I didn’t find their chemistry to smoke. Stars at Noon is too needlessly languorous and not sizzling enough to be a really good movie.

Qualley pulls her dress over her head within minutes of meeting any man; if the director weren’t female, Stars at Noon would face criticism for male gaze exploitation.

Denis also has oddly chosen a sound track that could have lifted from Showtime soft porn.

Qualley with her fidgety energy and her hyper-direct gaze, is perfectly cast as Trish. I first saw Qualley when she jumped off the screen as a Manson Girl in Once Upon a Time..In Hollywood and then in Fosse/Verdon. She has the charisma to carry a movie much better than Stars at Noon.

Joe Alwyn is dreamy enough to make it credible that Trish would fall hard for Daniel.

Photo caption: Margaret Qualley and Benny Safdie in STARS AT NOON. Courtesy of A24.

I can’t say enough about Benny Safdie’s performance as a character credited as CIA Man. His affability makes him all the more sinister. The CIA Man knows that he holds all the cards, and there’s no need to seem like a brute, even if he is going to compel Trish into an egregious and traumatizing act. It’s all business, thank you very much.

I usually think of Benny and his brother Josh as indie directors (Uncut Gems), but Benny has been acting and he has real chops. In Licorice Pizza, he nailed the role of the closeted, charismatic do-gooder politician,

John C. Reilly shows up briefly, wearing a wild 1980s-perm-gone-wrong as the editor that Trish has burned her very last bridge with, and his cameo is hilarious.

I watched Stars at Noon on Amazon, one of the many streaming platforms which offer it.

THE SNIPER: lethal mommy issues

Arthur Franz in THE SNIPER

The Sniper is an unfortunately prescient film noir that tracks the loner Edward Miller (Arthur Franz), whose misogyny drives him to murder a series of San Francisco women in what seem like random shootings.

From the beginning, it’s very clear that 1) every encounter with a woman pushes Miller’s buttons, and 2) he is trying to control a compulsion to shoot them.

When ER doctor treating him for a burn asks, “Can I ask you a question? Were you ever in a mental institution?”, Miller replies, “Only when I was in prison – in the psycho ward.” Uh oh.

Understandable public hysteria triggers a manhunt, led by a seasoned detective lieutenant (Adolphe Menjou) and his snarky assistant (Gerald Mohr), a guy who is never witty but thinks he is. The embattled police chief is played by Frank Faylen (cabbie Ernie in It’s a Wonderful Life). The cops don’t understand who they are looking for or how to track him down.

If The Sniper is any indication, the SFPD’s police methods of communications, investigation and crowd control  were very primitive in 1952.

A police psychologist (Richard Kiley) educates the cops about the killer’s profile, and they finally close in. The weakest part of The Sniper is a talky “message picture” segment where the psychologist tries to convince some civic dinosaurs that the mentally ill need treatment to keep them from killing the rest of us. It’s as lame as the Simon Oakland epilogue lecture in Psycho

It’s notable that The Sniper was released in 1952, before “active shooter” was a thing. This was 14 years before the Texas Tower shootings and 16 years before Peter Bogdanovich’s similarly-themed fictional narrative Targets. The Zodiac Killer, a real life anonymous serial killer who communicated directly with the police, first struck 16 years after The Sniper (and also terrorized the Bay Area).

The Sniper is also an early exploration of misogynistic attitudes and violence. Even the casual remarks from the folks on the street illustrate unconsciously sexist attitudes on gender.

Arthur Franz in THE SNIPER

The Sniper depends on the performance by Arthur Franz, and he is excellent. Of course, he gets to play full psycho, but he is best when he is observing women and silently registering disgust and repulsion. With his countenance otherwise placid, the look in Franz’s eyes changes at the instant that he is triggered into antipathy; you can see him thinking Bitch! Slut! This performance is Franz’s career topper.

I had a vague recollection of Franz, but couldn’t place his other screen work, which was primarily in amiable supporting roles. Franz was the young corporal who narrates The Sands of Iwo Jima, a young ship’s officer in The Caine Mutiny and had a supporting turn in the fine Fritz Lang/Dana Andrews noir Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. But most of his 152 screen credits came in 1950s and 1960s television, including five guest appearances in Perry Mason.

Marie Windsor and Arthur Franz n THE SNIPER

The most dazzling performance in The Sniper is Marie Windsor’s as one of Miller’s laundry delivery customers, the singer in a bar. Windsor is at her most charismatic; her sexy charm, however, is exactly what rubs Miller the wrong way.

Menjou is solid, but these are not Mohr’s or Faylen’s best performances. Jay Novello sparkles in a very small role as the tavern owner who employs Marie Windsor’s songstress.

Arthur Franz in THE SNIPER

The Sniper is directed by the accomplished Edward Dmytryk (Murder My Sweet, Crossfire, The Hidden Room, The Caine Mutiny). Dmytryk elevates the tension with dramatic shots from the sniper’s and victim’s points of view. Dmytryk even gets a lttle showy when Miller shoots someone and the fatal bullet breaks the glass on her publicity poster.

The San Francisco locations are superbly detailed in the blog ReelSF, an essential for Bay Area cinephiles. (However, the boardwalk carnival was shot in Southern California, not at San Francisco’s Playland-at-the-Beach.)

The Sniper is very hard to find. It is not available to stream, and I needed to buy the French DVD. The Sniper is scheduled to screen at the 2022 Noir City film festival.

Adolphe Menjou and Gerald Mohr in THE SNIPER

NIGHTMARE ALLEY: enough burning ambition for a thousand carnies

Photo caption: Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett in NIGHTMARE ALLEY. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

Nightmare Alley is Guillermo del Toro’s absorbing remake of the 1947 film noir classic, a cautionary fable of overreaching. Del Toro has deepened the minor characters, creating a showcase for many of our finest film actors.

It’s just before WW II and a drifter named Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) is desperate enough to take a menial job in a transient carnival. In the first scene, we learn that Stan is lethally dangerous; he also has movie star good looks, a gift of charm and enough burning ambition for a thousand carnies.

Stan befriends (and beds) the world-weary Zeena (Toni Collette), who stars in a mind-reading act. Zeena is married to Pete (David Straithairn), a master of clairvoyance acts, whose alcoholism has dropped him from vaudeville stardom to this gutter-level carnival. Stan ingratiates himself with Pete and steals Pete’s notebook of secret codes. Armed with Pete’s secret system, Stan seduces the good-hearted and pretty, young Molly (Rooney Mara), and the two head off to launch a new nightclub act in the Big Time.

Stan and Molly achieve great success and encounter Lilith, who has her own phony psychologist racket. Stan sees an opportunity for even greater riches by fleecing the rich – pretending to communicate with their dead loved ones. Pete had warned Stan against “the spook business”, and Molly has moral objections. But Stan sees Lilith as an equally ruthless and amoral partner, and he proceeds with his scheme. Will he succeed? (Hint – this is a film noir.)

Bradley is very good as Stan, a guy who will do anything to win, and who is intolerable when he gets to the top. Blanchett is superb as the sleek and cynical Lilith. Willem Dafoe is perfect as Clem, the carnival boss; Clem’s pay-by-play description of geek recruitment is one of the best scenes this year.

Del Toro wrote the screenplay with his wife Kim Morgan who is also (YAY!) a longstanding movie blogger (Sunset Gun). The source material for both movies was the William Lindsay Gresham novel. Gresham had a buddy in the – Spanish Civil War who was a carnie abd fascinated Gresham with his tales of the carnie life.

The 1947 original runs one hour and fifty minutes. With my strong bias against overlong films, I was initially skeptical of the 2021 version’s two hours, thirty minutes running time. But del Toro and Morgan invest the extra forty minutes into enriching the minor roles played by Straithairn and Dafoe, and other fine character actors: Ron Perlman, Mary Steenbergen, Richard Jenkins, Tim Blake Nelson, Jim Beaver and Holt McCallany (Mindhunters).

Willem Dafoe in NIGHTMARE ALLEY. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

I recently rewatched the original 1947 Nightmare Alley, and it still stands up. I’m not usually a fan of Tyrone Power, but I’ll admit that he’s perfect as Stan, and his work at the end, when Stan is on the skids, is heartbreaking. Joan Blondell is excellent as Zeena, and Colleen Gray is compellingly adorable as Molly. Helen Walker’s turn as Lilith is brilliant, and it’s a shame that an auto accident scandal derailed her career. Ian Keith, a stage actor with very few memorable screen appearances, delivered a touching performance as Pete (in far less screen time than Straithairn gets).

Tamara Deverell should win the 2022 Academy Award for production design; she deserves it for Lilith’s art deco office suite alone, never mind for creating the extraordinary world of the carnivals.

Nightmare Alley is the first film i”ve seen with geek credits: Paul Anderson as Geek #1 and Jesse Buck as Geek #2. I also stayed to the end to see no animals were harmed – bad things happen to chickens, so the CGI effects in Nightmare Alley are pretty cluckin’ effective.

The final line is one of the all-time best. Nightmare Alley is one of the Best Movies of 2021, and is currently in theaters.

ONE FALSE MOVE: the inevitable confrontation with America’s original sin

Cynda Williams and Billy Bob Thornton in ONE FALSE MOVE

The gripping contemporary neo-noir One False Move begins with a home invasion in Los Angeles. Two vicious professional robbers, with one’s beautiful girlfriend, steal money and cocaine, leaving a trail of corpses. The crime is solved right away – the cops know who did it and that the murderers are headed to a small town in Arkansas. The LA cops fly to Arkansas and lay in wait with the local constabulary. One False Move is a ticking time bomb as we wait for the criminals to drive across the Southwest to the inevitable confrontation.

This is a fundamentally noir story – there are guys overreaching for greed and ambition, a femme fatale, and a very dark secret. The screenplay was written by Billy Bob Thornton (before his breakthrough Sling Blade) and his writing partner Tom Epperson. One False Move was filmed in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, about two hours from where Thornton grew up, in and around Hot Springs.

The robbers are an odd couple that met in prison. Ray (Thornton) is white, an edgy, coke-fueled, brutal and not very smart gunsel, always on the verge of an epic misjudgement. Pluto (Michael Beach) is black, an ever-calculating crime machine – a cold, brilliant and bloodthirsty sociopath. They are accompanied by Ray’s beautiful black girlfriend Fantasia (Cynda Williams).

When the two seasoned LA homicide detectives (Jim Metzler and Earl Billings), arrive in Arkansas well ahead of the robbers, they encounter the local Sheriff, Dale “Hurricane” Dixon (Bill Paxton). Hurricane is overeager and over-enthusiastic, and his nickname obviously comes from his being an irrepressible force of nature. He’s comfortable as a big fish in a little pond, but now he fantasizes about being a big city cop. As he charges around thoughtlessly, he thinks that this is his big chance to be the kind of cop that he watches on TV.

This was Fantasia’s hometown, where she grew up with her given name of Lila. Dale and Lila share a significant past.

Cynda Williams in ONE FALSE MOVE

As a femme fatale, Fantasia/Lila can manipulate both Ray and Dale, although Pluto is immune to her charms. She is clearly a more decent person than Ray and Pluto, and she has one relatable vulnerability. but she does things and intends to do things that are very, very bad.

This was Cynda Williams’s second film role. She was married to Billy Bob Thornton for two years, including during the making of One False Move. She has worked consistently since (playing Halle Berry’s sister in two movies), but One False Move has certainly been her best-remembered performance.

Bill Paxton in ONE FALSE MOVE

Bill Paxton left a great body of work that included starring in the topflight episodic series Big Love and a key role in Apollo 13. Big Love and One False Move demonstrate that he should have gotten more leading roles. Paxton’s Hurricane is always bubbling over, whether it’s with ambition, naivete or good ol’ boy chumminess.

One False Move was directed by Carl Franklin. who also directed the period neo-noir Devil in a Blue Dress. Franklin has directed lots of TV, including episodes of House of Cards and Mindhunters).

America’s original sin – race – is at the core of One False Move. The entire plot is predicated on something that happened when Lila was 17 – and neither that occurrence nor any of the following events would have happened if Lila were white.

Ray and Fantasia/Lila are an interracial couple, the two LA cops are white and black, and Dale unwittingly leaks his casual racism.

One False Move is on my list of Overlooked Neo-noir and can be streamed from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.

WILDLAND: giving family ties a bad name

Photo caption: Sandra Guldberg Kampp in WILDLAND. Photo courtesy of BAC Films.

In the remarkable Danish neo-noir Wildland, teenage Ida (Sandra Guldberg Kampp) is orphaned and is placed with relatives that she doesn’t really know. She gradually learns that the family, headed by her mom’s estranged sister (Sidse Babett Knudsen) is a ruthless criminal enterprise.

Will Ida become entangled in a life of crime? Can she escape? Wildland simmers and evolves into a nail biter right up to its noir-stained epilogue.

WILDLAND. Photo courtesy of Snowglobe.

Wildland is a study in both study in teen psychology (why doesn’t she report these criminals?) and in dysfunctional family dynamics. The aunt is the indisputable matriarch, and not only runs the crime crew like Tony Soprano, but also seeks to control the personal lives of her adult sons. She infantilizes them, keeps them all living on her house and expects to pick their romantic partners. Jonas (Joachim Fjelstrup), the oldest and most functional-appearing son, is always affable and seems in control – until his mother has a conflicting whim.

Sidse Babett Knudsen was Mads Mikkelsen’s co-star in Susanne Bier’s After the Wedding, which I pegged as the second-best movie of its year. Playing a prime minister, she was the lead in the political drama series Borgen, a huge, 30-episode hit in Denmark and the UK. Here, Knudson goes downscale as a trashy, middle-aged mom, still with a saucy walk; she’s always in control – until she isn’t.

Sandra Guldberg Kampp, with her watchful and ever-observant demeanor is perfect as Ida. This is a breakthrough, possibly star-making, performance.

Wildland is the first feature for director Jeanette Nordahl, who also had the idea for the story. The movie’s original Danish title Kød & Blod literally translates as Flesh and Blood.

Wildland has been compared to the Aussie neo-noir Animal Kingdom, which garnered Jacki Weaver an Oscar nod as the ever-ebullient grandma who puts out a hit on her own grandson. Animal Kingdom also featured the crime matriarch with a set of thuggish sons and lots of suspense, but it featured more action than does Wildland – fence-jumping escapes and a shooting at the finale. Wildland is more deeply psychological.

Wildland is streaming on Virtual Cinema at Laemmle.

THE DRY: a mystery as psychological as it is procedural

Photo caption: Eric Bana in Robert Connolly’s film THE DRY, which playes at SFFILM. Photo courtesy of SFFILM.

Eric Bana soars in The Dry, an atmospheric, slow-burn tale of murder and long-festering secrets from the Australian outback. The Dry is as psychological as it is procedural.

Bana plays Aaron, a renowned big city police officer who returns to his remote, tiny hometown, for the funeral of his childhood best friend. The friend, with his wife and young son, have been shotgunned to death, and all signs point to a murder-suicide. The friends’ parents implore Aaron to see if there is another explanation.

That task is complicated by the act that Aaron is not welcomed by many in his hometown. His teen heartthrob was mysteriously drowned, and Aaron was a prime suspect, causing him to flee the town. Twenty years later, all he knows is that he didn’t do it and that he lied about his alibi.

As indicated by the title, writer-director Robert Connolly sets The Dry in Australian outback in the Climate Change. The vast, tinder-dry landscapes underscores the literal and psychological isolation of the locals.

Aaron, racked with feelings about the twenty-year-old mystery death, starts investigating the current day murders. He joins up with the inexperienced local cop, and they poke around the rural community over several, searingly hot days. It takes a while to get there, but I thought the payoff justified the slow pace; The Wife didn’t. Both of us were surprised when the The Real Killer was revealed.

Eric Bana’s performance as Aaron is superb. The whole movie is about Aaron trying to keep his investigative focus while being buffeted by feelings about his childhood friends and his hometown and the trauma that caused him to move away from them.

Because of his good looks and his physicality, Bana appears in a lot of big movies that don’t test his emotional range (Hulk, Troy, Black Hawk Down). But Bana is always good and even better in movies like Munich and Hanna, where we get to glimpse his thinking and feeling. For a really good and overlooked Eric Bana movie, I recommend the 2012 thriller Deadfall, available to stream on Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

The Dry played at SFFILM in April, but I missed it there. The Dry is now in Bay Area theaters and streaming on AppleTV, YouTube and Google Play.

PALE FLOWER: bracing neo-noir

Ryô Ikebe in PALE FLOWER

Coming up on Turner Classic Movies on June 18, the Japanese neo-noir Pale Flower is a slow burn that erupts into thrilling set pieces. This is pioneering neo-noir. Pale Flower is writer-director Masahiro Shinoda’s masterpiece; its look and feel is as different from classic noir as are Elevator to the Gallows and Blast of Silence.

Maraki (Ryô Ikebe) is a fortyish Yazuka hit man, just released from loyally serving a prison term. He went away for offing a gangland rival, but now the two gangs have become allies. Out gambling with fellow Yakuza, he encounters the much younger woman Saeko (Mariko Kaga). The stoic and completely self-contained Maraki becomes fascinated by – and then obsessed with – Saeko, who lives her life seeking thrill after thrill.

PALE FLOWER

Maraki and Saeko meet gambling on the Japanese card game of hanafuda (flower cards). She is the only woman at a table surrounded by male gangsters. Shinoda makes the tension of card games resemble that of walking into a hostile bar or waiting an Old West quick draw gunfight. The card games are silent but for the ritual betting and the players clicking their cards. The film’s title refers to both hanafuda and Saeko.

Mariko Kaga in PALE FLOWER

Just who is this mystery woman? Muraki is snagged, but he is too cool to search out her background. His obsession is more complicated than sexual passion alone, although there is a sexual element (watch whether he acts on it when he can). The mystery makes Saeko (the then 20-year-old Mariko Kaga in only her fourth movie) all the more captivating.

In another gripping set piece, Saeko races her sports car through Tokyo’s tunnels and overpasses at 2:30 AM. In the passenger seat, Muraki is transfixed by her recklessness. He’s not thrilled by the careening wild ride, he’s thrilled by Saeko’s compulsion to seek the thrill.

Mariko Kaga and Ryô Ikebe in PALE FLOWER

The ultimate thrill might be to accompany a hit man on the job. The climactic three-minute scene is a mob hit in a church, set to an aria, Henry Purcell’s Dido’s Lament. It is operatic – and remarkably similar to Francis Ford Coppola’s later montage in The Godfather where Michael Corleone’s assassins kills all his enemies while he is standing in church at the christening of his sister’s baby. Muarki’s murder-for-hire is up-close-and-personal.

When Maraki and Saeko are on-screen, Pale Flower is dramatically and stylistic Stylistic – the card games, the car race, the final killing, In contrast, we see the mundane plotting of the Yazuka bosses (but not their crimes) as they kibbitz at the horse races. Their underlings go bowling.

Does it all matter? is a central theme in film noir. Pale Flower’s powerful final prison scene is the the ultimate neo-noir ending.

Pale Flower is included in Roger Ebert’s Great Movies. Pale Flower is challenging to find; it can be streamed with a subscription to Criterion Collection or Kanopy, and it plays occasionally on TCM, including on June 18.

Ryô Ikebe in PALE FLOWER