Yashua Kimbrough (jimniexperience) The cinematography that inspired Quentin Tarantino , Johnnie To , and Takeshi Kitano ... Violent, cool, jazzy, colorful, gangster, clubs, shootouts, guns with codes ..Tetsu lives a charmed life by the side of his boss Mr. Kurata. But when his boss disbands the group rival Otsuka wants to take over . When Tetsu declines his offer to join his gang Otsuka sets out a personal path to destroy Tetsu and Kurata. He takes the mortgage of Kurata building by force. When people start dying and gangs begin forming alliances, Tetsu decides to get out of dodge and become a drifter .Otsuka , obsessed with Tetsu's demise, sends Viper (equally obsessed with Tetsu) to take him out. Along Tetsu's journey he participates in a shootout in the snowy mountains, befriends a drifter from Otsuka gang Shooting Star, and gets into a bar fight in South Japan.Otsuka strongarms Kurata into rubbing out Tetsu. Tetsu gets word his boss betrayed him and sets off back to Toyko. He returns to find Otsuka in his club beating his girl, his former boss by his side. Thee final shootout ensues

kurosawakira Wherever the place be whence the zaniest Imamura, Ôbayashi or Greenaway might stem, Suzuki's films come from there as well. Not that "Tokyo Drifter" (1966) would exactly share a room with "Hausu" (1977), though. In fact, I find it to be closer to the early Wong Kar-Wai up until 1995, or even the contemporaries beside Imamura, certainly not excluding Kurosawa, whose "Yojimbo" (1961) could the quintessential film in the genre.Yet still I find the most pervasive companion to Tokyo Drifter from the multitude of Zatôichi films. There the kind of James Bond pop-art of a larger-than-life quest to defeat gravity (here to break free from the yakuza world) ends in the predestined pull back toward Earth. Tetsu is the one to recognize this when he's unable to escape trouble amid the snow.This was my first Suzuki, and "Tokyo Drifter" is a gorgeously synchronized film. By "synchronized" I mean the utter control Suzuki and his crew have over the movie: the story utilized effectively through the use of every cinematic means possible to not only forget about the story but to emphasize it. This means the film doesn't forget what it's supposed to do (to carry the story), yet carrying the story is the least of its concerns. What do I mean by this? One could argue that the story is weak. The reason for this is the fact that the story is so simple. It's simple, yet deceptively so: by furnishing us with all the possible known material in the genre, Suzuki doesn't go the usual way as modern action directors might as to forget about the story and concentrate on whatever skill it is some might wish to show off. Instead, he has a deceptively simple story made into a strong film because he plays the story out. And the way he does this is still not exactly what the modern cinema has been doing from the sixties onward — by looking at itself, pointing at its possibly perceived flaws and laughing at them, modern self-aware cinema makes us aware that it's our twisted notions about film that are to be laughed at. In other words, I really find much of the New Wave basically trying to educate us by showing our mistakes as filmgoers.Suzuki, however, doesn't do this. This film acts out like a guilty pleasure, which it is to some extent, yet without the washed out feeling in the end that we're somehow worse off because of it. He doesn't hoodwink us into believing what we're seeing is something it's not, and instead he carefully makes the ironies even stronger. Sure, the story is generic, yet what he does with it is unapologetically cinematic and unapologetically true to not only itself and its great sense of rhythm and humour, but also to us, since it doesn't punish us by trying to teach us a lesson about what film should be like.Instead, this is a film that's just as jazzy as its back cover descriptions make it out to be. So much of its humour is visually oriented that it's a marvellous joyride for people like me who find from Chaplin and Keaton the elixir for a rainy day. The brawl toward the end is so masterfully executed, the timing of each movement and the fun of it all, that it's one of the highlights of the film.And one last thing. Another reason why it works so well is that the actors are taking it seriously. They're not acting hip by knowing it's an act, they're actually invested in the stereotype they might be playing. This way it's Suzuki who can channel that atmosphere back to us. If this still makes sense in the morning, I'll eat my hat, although first I have to buy one.

CountZero313 Seijun Suzuki's iconoclastic Tokyo Drifter is a roller-coaster ride of startling images and satirical set pieces. Apparently his studio bosses in the day didn't know what to make of it; we are not that much better off decades later. At times playful, at others adventurous and then touching, this film defies description. It just has to be seen. The sudden light changes are outrageous but fantastic. The cheeky half-hearted cop-chases-bad-guy sequence is amusing. The women are treated badly, the Americans even worse - but it is all super cool. You'll be whistling the theme for days afterwards. MTV and Tarantino are impostors - watch Tokyo Drifter to see where it all started.

BJJManchester A basically routine Japanese gangster melodrama,TOKYO DRIFTER has been recognised as a classic example of 'B' picture film-making by dedicated film scholars and cultists in the West,along with Seijun Suzuki's other Yakuza masterpiece,BRANDED TO KILL.It has a confusing,if deliberately ambiguous narrative which takes considerable following,which is the film's only major Achilles heel.Where TOKYO DRIFTER succeeds is in it's clever production design,lighting,stylised action,superb photography and imagery.Suzuki has ensured that,if we the audience are hopelessly led astray with the murky goings on with the plot,we can still admire it's dazzling style and colour,plus some other quirky touches,such as gags about hairdryers,a John Wayne-like Western barroom brawl,and an oddly memorable theme song.This is insistently played throughout the film,but still pleasantly haunts the mind despite it's repetition.After BRANDED TO KILL,Suzuki fell foul of his bosses and was sacked for making such unusual,auteur-style Yakuza melodramas.This is a great shame as he did not direct another film for some years afterwards,depriving us all of his uniquely styled gems,possibly when he was creatively at his most fertile.It is all the more encouraging,that,in his 80's,there are still new admirers and retrospectives of his work(there was one quite recently in London,with Suzuki making a welcome personal appearance despite failing health),and his most up to date work,PRINCESS RACCOON,was generally given considerable praise.Let's hope that this previously neglected master stylist of Japanese,if not World,cinema,will finally be given his dues.RATING:7 and a Half out of 10.