A broke hitman, Akira (Yûzô Kayama, RED BEARD, THE SWORD OF DOOM) is brought out of retirement and hired to kill a visiting reporter from Europe, by a shady Japanese politician. After the job, things get complicated when Akira falls for the protege of his victim, a young Chinese photographer named Ling Ling (Zhen Zhen, BLACK ALICE, I DO). Before you can hum a few bars of "Someone To Watch Over Me" Ling Ling is staying at Akira's place, under his protection, and a romance is blooming. The newly christened lovebirds spend a few scenes enjoying things like taking pictures of locomotives, and staring out at the water, before things get ugly again.
It turns out Akira's employers are trying to erect a Fourth Reich, and at a secret complex, have been building an army to rise up, and the dead reporter and Lee lee have evidence of the plot. Lucky for all us Nazi haters, this new plan isn't working out so great, and that secret complex is more full of "super soldiers in training" laying stacked to ceiling in bunks, as whatever regimine they have been on has been making them sick and crazy.
Kiyoshi Nishimura's THE TARGET OF ROSES aka RED TARGET is, at times, an odd duck. On one hand it is a pretty standard "shooter" film. On the other it is an English language heavy production, with Japanese, German, Argentinian, and Chinese characters all speaking it in a silted, odd, and incredibly broken form (yes, you will still need to have the subtitles rolling). THE TARGET OF ROSES, while a pretty solid addition to the sub-genre, is also a common animal, in that it slots into the many (and I mean many) "shooter" films, scrupulous hitmen with a heart, whose emotions crack wide open, causing the often cruel wheels of fate to roll over the films characters, and not leaving a lot to mourn behind.
One of the things I enjoyed most about this film is the wonderful time capsule feel it brings, with some nice cinematography showing us the Tokyo of the early 70's, with it's groovy fashion and hair styles, and wonderfully anachronistic, ad-ridden skylines.
I have poked around but not found an official dvd/blu release source. The copy I viewed was recorded from an HDTV source overseas, then fan subbed. However, I will say, for fans of this stuff, while not a pinnacle film, is well worth tracking down.
- 7/10
NO TRAILER AVAILABLE
Comments
Post a Comment