Kiyotaka Nanbara

Part One of the Maiku Hama Private Eye Trilogy
Detective Maiku “Mike” Hama (Masatoshi Nagase; Mystery Train) navigates the Yokohama underworld with razor sharp threads, Belmondo cool and two-fisted street savvy. But when he comes to the aid of a Taiwanese waiter at a local mah-jongg parlor, the unflappable Hama has no idea what he’s in for. Though seemingly a luckless immigrant teetering on the threshold of Yokohama’s gutter, Hama’s Taiwanese client holds the secret to a ferocious gangland revenge triangle that soon has bullets, fists and severed fingers flying. Hama’s plunge into a dizzyingly escalating, brutally violent multiethnic gang war ultimately snares him in a web of revenge and deceit that spans continents and severs bloodlines.Read More »

Synopsis:
Mike Hama is a private investigator who has been reduced to combing the mean streets of the Yokohama waterfront on a borrowed bicycle.Read More »

Quote:
Stairway to the Distant Past is the second film in the Mike Hama Private Investigator Trilogy. If you’ve seen part one The Most Terrible Time in My Life you must seek this out to find out how all your favourite characters are getting on. The films themes are age and family as Mikes mother “Dynamite Sexy Lilly” returns to Yokohama with her strip act many years after deserting Mike and his sister Akane. She reveals who Mikes father is and he sets out to find him. This films DoP deserves an Oscar as the picture is stunningly shot – it reminded me most of the Cinema du Look of Luc Besson and Leos Carax.Read More »