Crime

From Kinji Fukasaku (Battles Without Honor & Humanity) comes this pivotal early crime drama in the celebrated career of the director who changed the face of Japanese action cinema. Stylish and hard-boiled, Sympathy for the Underdog stars Koji Tsuruta, one of Japan’s seminal figures in the Yakuza genre, as Gunji, an aging Yakuza who is released from prison after ten years. Gunji lives by a code of honor that has no place among Tokyo’s modern corporate gangs. He gets a new lease on life by reforming his former gang and taking over the whiskey trade on the island of Okinawa. But he is forced to make a final, fateful, bloody stand against the mainland gang that sent him to prison.Read More »

Gang leader Nami (Meiko Kaji) kills a member of a yakuza group and goes away to prison. Upon her release three years later, she’s a shamed woman confined to living in the shadowy world of sex clubs and street gangs. She returns to the city to live with her uncle, a billiard-hall owner, and after befriending pimp and ne’er-do-well Ryuji (Tsunehiko Watase), she gets a job working at a hostess club in the chic Ginza neighborhood, where the expensive shops and neon lights conceal a dark world of crime and sexual slavery. But when a rival gang attempts to muscle in on the club, Nami becomes enmeshed in a violent struggle that forces her to wield a skilled pool cue to defend her uncle’s business, and eventually a short sword to wreak bloody vengeance upon her enemies.Read More »

Synopsis:
The president of the Japanese National Railways is found dead during a period in which train service is plagued by numerous layoffs, strikes and shutdowns. The government says that the president was murdered; the police claim it was a suicide. A quizzical reporter follows the case for years, but the basic question remains unanswered: was the victim killed by members of the burgeoning Communist movement in Japan, or was the death stage-managed by the authorities in hopes of discrediting the Communists?Read More »

A young woman who has just become engaged has her life completely shattered when she is raped while on her way home from work.Read More »

Quote:
A reforming ex-gangster tries to reconcile with his estranged policeman brother, but the ties to his former gang are difficult to break.Read More »

18-year-old Caspar wants to reach the top, no matter what. He carries out small-time break-ins for Jamal, before moving on to work for big player Björn. All goes well, until Jamal’s gang decide they want revenge. What starts with pushing and shoving soon escalates into armed conflict. This is a big test for Caspar: is he ruthless enough for this battle? And will he drag his younger brother into it?Read More »

A fashion designer gives a private showing at her mansion over a weekend, but someone starts killing off the models.Read More »

Paul Kersey, the soft-spoken family man with the knack for wasting street scum, hoped that, after cleaning an entire neighbourhood in Death Wish 3 (1985), he would hang up his guns, and lead a peaceful life. Nevertheless, more than ever, chaos, panic, and disaster are rampant on the mean streets of Los Angeles, as the unscrupulous drug dealers, Ed Zacharias and Jack Romero, whose rival gangs supply 90% of the narcotics in Los Angeles, exploit the helpless, terrorising everyone with their brutal methods. But, their reign of terror is about to end violently when the innocent teenage daughter of Kersey’s girlfriend dies of an overdose. Now, once again, the guns, and, in particular, Paul’s stainless-steel Ruger Mini-14 GB-F semi-automatic rifle, have the final say. Who can stand in the way of an angry, terribly dangerous, and armed-to-the-teeth Paul Kersey?Read More »

In this complex mystery, an American woman is married to a British businessman. The trouble begins when the woman suspects that she is being stalked. She tells this to her husband and his friend. They then go home. While the friend is upstairs making a phone call, the stalker sneaks in and kills her husband. The friend hears the commotion and rushes downstairs. He gets there just in time to hear the killer requesting payment from the wife for services rendered.Read More »