Best Title Ever

If only they had video games back then!

I don't know, the title actually gave me low expectations. I thought it was going to be a pretty generic gangster flick just made to bring in a quick buck. I didn't think it would be a bad movie but I didn't expect it to be a good one either, just something to watch, and I need the Japanese language exposure too. But it actually turned out a lot better than I expected it would. I don't think the title really does it justice. The line between the cops and gangsters is quite blurry and the movie shows that they aren't really so different after all.

It was interesting to me how the one cop kept ranting about communists. He wasn't so much interested in fighting crime, but in battling the big bad communists. Cops exist not to protect the public and eliminate crime (indeed, it isn't in their interests to eliminate crime, because they depend on a steady supply of criminals to jail for revenue), but to uphold a sociopolitical order, and yakuza and other such gangsters aren't a threat to that order (so long as they don't get too rowdy). In fact the yakuza are quite conservative, much like the Italian mafia, and historically in Japan as well as in France, Italy, Cuba, China, Colombia and the US, among other places, the police and gangsters have sometimes quite openly collaborated against communism and organized labor, because they shared interests in that respect. Both the yakuza and the Japanese police have their origins in the old feudal society and they retain much of its culture in various ways. Both of them have a stake in keeping things running as they are. This is why they have a certain camaraderie and the yakuza by and large are allowed to do business as usual. To this day in Japan the yakuza infect virtually every level of society, and very little is done about them. They even have public offices and project a semi-legitimate image of themselves as a part of Japanese society.

So, yeah, the police and yakuza aren't so different; they're both very much a part of the same society and social system and have various shared interests. Though maybe the police aren't always as overtly dirty as they are in this movie, the one idealistic cop, Kaida, is very much an exception to the rule. The police and yakuza may clash occasionally, but by and large the yakuza get a wink and a nod. That's what impressed me so much about this movie, that it depicted this reality.