Masumi Harukawa

A samurai kills a Blind Man who tells him to “repay his debts.” Because of the samurai’s actions his entire family is to bear a terrible curse.Read More »

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Two escaped criminals who kidnapped a baby break into the house of Misawa, a man who works in an advertising agency and lives quietly with his family. They will force him to collect the child’s ransom for them.Read More »

Momojiro and Jonathan go to Kochi on a ferry. On the ferry a singer called Yuka dropped her sheet music into the ocean. Momojiro helps her by diving in to collect the sheets for her and ends up falling in love.Read More »

A truck driver in Yamagata prefecture finds himself stuck on the road due to a police speeding checkpoint. The trucker decides to use the road shoulder instead. Wen stopped they explain to the police that they have an emergency and are in a rush. Then a police cruiser with two policewomen again catches them. Apparently, this time it is for the crime of having been in a woman’s public bath.Read More »

Momojiro comes to the rescue of beautiful Akiko who struggles to run a ranch on her own.Read More »

A truck driver in Yamagata prefecture finds himself stuck on the road due to a police speeding checkpoint. The trucker decides to use the road shoulder instead. Wen stopped they explain to the police that they have an emergency and are in a rush. Then a police cruiser with two policewomen again catches them. Apparently, this time it is for the crime of having been in a woman’s public bath.Read More »

“Truck Yaro films usually repeat the same patterns again and again in almost every instalment. It may sound boring but it actually works out great and it’s a series trademark. You always know what to expect from the plot. Bunta is gonna fall in love and see stars but in the end he never gets the girl, Kinya is gonna forget his kids’ names, Bunta visits the bath house and bring gifts for the girls, later he has a comic fight sequence at a restaurant, usually against a rivaly truck driver… But Totsugeki Ichiban-boshi is a weird bird. The opening alone is, well, very weird. There’s also no rivalry driver, no probles with the kids’ names (they don’t even appear in the film, except in a photo) and no bath house scene… wait, did I say no topless bath house girls? Yeah, I did. But that sector gets taken care of when it later turns out that Kinya’s new lady friend Mary is a stripper by profession.Read More »

IMDb comments:
You can watch this crime drama as a sort of Japanese DESPERATE HOURS. A just married ordinary man has his family held as hostage by three hoodlums who want him to do something for them. Get a big package of money from his boss, and not a Yakuza. This is not a yakuza movie, folks, but a true suspense film, a bit far from what Kinji Fukasaku used to show us. A tale told with a terrific nick of time pace, with splendid editing and simple filming skills. The main lead character, the poor man who is lost in the city because he knows that he must obey to what the gangsters ordered him to do, this man’s play is so convincing. I was not lucky enough to see it with subtitles, and I am sure I unfortunately missed a lot. But I followed the basic scheme anyway. I would have imagined Koji Tsuruta as the husband’s character. A golden gem that deserves to be seen at all costs.Read More »

Quote:
In mid-career, while he is on a winning streak, and in the middle of a fight he is winning, a young boxer is revolted by the violence of the game. He allows himself to be beaten up and quits the match and the sport. He also leaves his wife and child and lives alone with his moth-eaten old dog, all the while losing his sight. Years later, he is hunted down by a young man who is ambitious to become a prize-winning boxer. Persistence pays off, and he eventually persuades the ex-boxer to be his manager and trainer. The boy begins his rise to success, though he has a stormy relationship with his manager.Read More »