Kaizô Hayashi

Part One of the Maiku Hama Private Eye Trilogy
Detective Maiku “Mike” Hama (Masatoshi Nagase; Mystery Train) navigates the Yokohama underworld with razor sharp threads, Belmondo cool and two-fisted street savvy. But when he comes to the aid of a Taiwanese waiter at a local mah-jongg parlor, the unflappable Hama has no idea what he’s in for. Though seemingly a luckless immigrant teetering on the threshold of Yokohama’s gutter, Hama’s Taiwanese client holds the secret to a ferocious gangland revenge triangle that soon has bullets, fists and severed fingers flying. Hama’s plunge into a dizzyingly escalating, brutally violent multiethnic gang war ultimately snares him in a web of revenge and deceit that spans continents and severs bloodlines.Read More »

For sixty years, the group of detectives known as “Detective Office 5” have raised the bar for detective work. The agents of Detective Office 5 are a group of stellar detectives lead by the genius code breaker Detective 507. When an unknown client enlists 507 to crack his most difficult programming code yet, the detective embarks for Shanghai where he crosses paths with a sniper, an informant, the head of the Blue-Dragon Mafia, and beautiful singer on the run, Meilan. As 507 stumbles deeper into a twisted quagmire of intrigue he discovers the sad truth behind the mystery.Read More »

Through philosophical and science themed imagination, Emile questions everything as a teenager in pre WWII Japan. As an adult, Emile is living in post WWII Japan. He is an unpopular author and an alcoholic who lives in poverty. Yet his imagination is still intact.Read More »

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An aging silent film actress hires a private eye and his wacky but helpful assistant to track down her missing daughter, Bellflower. The two follow a succession of bizarre, obscure clues, until they track down the location of the kidnappers and the daughter.Read More »

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The 3 Part of the Maiku Hama Triology is the best and probably darkest of all the films. In fact, this episode is more of a horror-like thriller reminiscent of a Takashi Miike film. “The Trap,” which is the final film of the trilogy was preceded by the more semi-comical episodes of “The Most Terrible Time In My Life,” and then followed by “Stairway To The Distant Past,” and finally concluding with this film, “The Trap.” In the previous episodes of the trilogy, Maiku Hama (Masatoshi Nagase) is not the aloof private detective he was originally portrayed as; but a much more intelligent and calm detective.Read More »

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Stairway to the Distant Past is the second film in the Mike Hama Private Investigator Trilogy. If you’ve seen part one The Most Terrible Time in My Life you must seek this out to find out how all your favourite characters are getting on. The films themes are age and family as Mikes mother “Dynamite Sexy Lilly” returns to Yokohama with her strip act many years after deserting Mike and his sister Akane. She reveals who Mikes father is and he sets out to find him. This films DoP deserves an Oscar as the picture is stunningly shot – it reminded me most of the Cinema du Look of Luc Besson and Leos Carax.Read More »

Review:
Mahjong (1996) is in many ways Yang’s greatest Satire, but has, at the same time, the beating pulse of a real dramatic story. In plays on the perception of Taiwan by foreign entities, urban locales, love, father/son relationships, and of course, themes of business & greed that Yang most vehemently loathes. The story is told through a variety of different viewpoints, but we are centered on a small gang of friends/hustlers, apparently led by Red Fish (Tang Congsheng), and consisting of Luen-Luen (Ke Yulun), a gentle-hearted translator, Hong Kong (Chen Chang of Crouching Tiger fame), a ladies man who is able to charm his way into any woman’s pants, and Little Buddha (the same actor who played “Cat” in Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day), a fake Feng-Shui expert who is used in the gang’s various scams. Read More »