The best Shigeru Izumiya’s crime movies
If you love cinema, you will share this ranking of the best Shigeru Izumiya’s movies, although you may have ordered them differently. In any case, we hope you love it and with a little luck discovering a movie that you still don’t know about Shigeru Izumiya.
The Beast to Die
6.7/10
A policeman is murdered and his gun, stolen, used to commit the next crime. Detective Kashiwagi, who is leading the investigation, learns that the author of the killings “walks like a dead man”. Kashiwagi runs into Date, a former correspondent in the Vietnam War. There, Date discovered hell and something snapped in his mind.
Keizoku: Unsolved Mysteries - Beautiful Dreamer
5.7/10
Graduating at the top of her class, elite detective candidate Jun Shibata is transferred to the section that handles cases deemed "unsolvable" by the department. Her partner, though a well-respected and experienced detective, has grown complacent after unsuccesfully pursuing these cases that many consider an exercise in futility. With her upper class breeding, her colleagues don't expect much from her either, but she suprises them all with her motivation and astounding powers of deduction. Well-constructed mysteries and colorful characters abound in this stylish and edgy police drama.
The Last True Yakuza
5.8/10
A made man during the height of Hiroshima's yakuza turf war must maneuver through the violence and betrayal inside the criminal underworld.
Tattoo Ari
6.6/10
An ardent culture-vulture youth, previously charged for the murder of a woman when he was young, plans to hold hostage a local bank.
Panic in High School
6.8/10
A parable about the inefficiency and anachronism of the Japanese educational system, which places an unusually large amount of importance on cramming for university entrance examinations, Panic High School is about the suicide of a high school student and its ensuing fallout at his school. When one of his classmates becomes frustrated with the math teacher's lack of sensitivity to the suicide, the student steals a rifle, returns to school, aerates the teacher's chest and then holds members of his class captive. This leads to an aggressive standoff with the police and lots of shots of his parents crying and bowing in shame, totally mortified.
Heat After Dark
5.7/10
Heat After Dark is director Ryuhei Kitamura's first theatrical release. This 50 minute film is predominantly a character study within an intense action drama. Those familiar with Kitamura's later works, perhaps especially Versus will realize this is the beginning of his characetristic modus operandi. Here, the well defined characters consist of the innocent (the cop), the relatively good (Atsuro Watabe), the relatively bad (Shinichi Suzuki), and the absolutely bad (Shigeru Izumiya ), and a few other Yakuza hoodlums thrown in for entertainment.
Charge! Hooligans of Hakata
6.3/10
Known for his striking visuals and outlandish subject matter, maverick director Sogo Ishii is considered to be the master of Japanese punk cinema. In ‘Attack!’, biker gangs meet the Japanese punk scene.
The Gambler
