Suggests: HFA Screening PALE FLOWER

Probably Shinoda’s most accessible film for uninitiated viewers, this enthralling thriller concerns a yakuza (Ikebe Ryo) who, on his release from prison after serving time for murder, returns to his old gang and is drawn into another dangerous assignment. Admirers of Jean-Pierre Melville’s LE SAMOURAI will find themselves at home with Shinoda’s radicalization of film noir through style and behavior. Veteran matinee idol Ikebe delivers a career-redefining performance; he is ideally matched with Kaga Mariko as a young woman seeking excitement in gambling, drugs and fast driving. Violent set pieces are an inevitability, but Shinoda approaches them with reluctance and misdirection, subverting them into blankly murky anticlimaxes.

Watch PALE FLOWER at the Harvard Film Archive.

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