Matt Cooper Films

Hell Dogs (2022) by Masato Harada

Goro Idezaki (Junichi Okada) is working his first shift as a patrol officer when five people are gunned down in an armed robbery. Believing he was to blame he sets out to kill the members of the Chinese gang responsible. He is later picked up by the chief of the undercover crime squad and asked to infiltrate the Toshokai yakuza group. Under the name of Kanetaka he pairs with another yakuza hitman called Muroka (Kentaro Sakaguchi). The two are assigned to protect the new head of the family, Toake (Miyavi). As he gets closer to bringing down the group, Kentaro must ensure that his cover is not blown.

Based on a comic book by Akio Fukamachi and directed by Masato Harada, who also wrote the script, “Hell Dogs” is a stylish crime thriller with flashes of nihilistic violence. The story will be familiar to fans of the genre, with an undercover cop; various double-crosses; sexual liaisons that threaten to undermine the operation; and gangster in sharp suits. The array of characters creates a sense of realism, with bosses and capos, enforcers, the mob wife, the police chief, the love interest, an assassin, call girls, and more enlivening the world, although due to the constrictions of film many are little more than plot drivers. The central relationship between Kanetaka and Muroka is well-done, although there is never any real sense that Kanetaka has conflicted loyalties, which seems like a missed opportunity to create some tension. Several side characters, in particular Noriko (Shinobu Otake) suffer from this lack of time, with their backstories largely brushed over. That being said the star-studded cast is firing on all cylinders, bringing these archetypes to life with charisma to spare. The action sequences are well-done, leaving no doubt about the brutality of these criminal regimes, though they occasionally tip into the ludicrous, such as when two people miss each other several times from point-blank range. These moments occur often enough to be considered the film’s ironic humour, or a sideways comment on genre conventions, as when a character comments on never having seen a female assassin before.

Idezaki’s redemption arc sets him on a hero’s path, journeying through hell to make amends for his past mistakes. Although he is not personally to blame for the initial crime, his determination to set things rights displays a lex talionis sense of justice. A question arises as to whether Idezaki is driven by a sense of justice, or something darker, hate, drive to dominate, or pure aggression. Bosses on both sides of the criminal divide point Idezaki at a target, which begs the question of how different they are and whether Idezaki’s life is guided more by luck than free will. This comparison is brought up again, when Muroka relates Idezaki’s story, not knowing who he is, suggesting that ideas of honour, loyalty and justice are mirrored in the police and the yakuza. One side story that is given short shrift is that of Muroka’s ex-girlfriend, who has begun a survivors group for people who have lost loved ones to gang violence. It is one of several curious ideas thrown into the mix, another being the various undercover agents who are revealed throughout and the police force’s negligence in taking care of them. A complex crime thriller with enough interesting characters to breathe life into the well-worn story of a cop going undercover in the yakuza.

Matt Cooper Films

Masked Ward (2020) by Hisashi Kimura

Junior doctor Hayami (Kentaro Sakaguchi) is brought in by his senior Kosakai (Ryohei Otani) for a night-shift at a former psychiatric hospital, vestiges of which include the disused and padlocked operating theatre and iron bars that can be used to close off the upper floors, making them inaccessible other than via the elevator. Hayami is met by nurses Higashino (Noriko Eguchi) and Sasaki (Rio Uchida) and doctor Tadokoro (Masanobu Takashima). Not long into his shift a man in a clown mask who recently held up a convenience store arrives with his hostage, a woman named Hitomi Kawasaki (Mei Nagano). Hayami’s night is made worse through macabre discoveries about the goings-on at this hospital and his own feelings of guilt about the recent death of his girlfriend Yoko (Izumi Fujimoto), Kosakai’s sister.

If it sounds like a convoluted plot, that is part of the appeal of this unsettling thriller. Based on a novel by Mikito Chinen, who worked on the screenplay alongside director Hisashi Kimura, “Masked Ward” traps a small cast of characters in the environs of the hospital and maintains the tension by steadily revealing a series of dark secrets that piece together in horrifying ways. Many of these mysteries and disparate elements seem irrelevant or incompatible until the end when they are drawn together. The film spends a lot of time setting up this complex plot and struggles to give its characters significant depth. Hayami and Kawasaki’s relationship is developed through shared experiences of trauma and Kentaro Sakaguchi and Mei Nagano give solid performances as people trapped in a difficult situation. The film plays with chronology, beginning with a single unseen survivor from the events that go on to form the majority of the plot. This sets up a tense atmosphere as you know early on not everyone will get out of the hospital alive. It also works to throw you off the scent, offering unreliable information that the audience must attempt to sift through. The script and direction work to keep this sense of mystery, and the film is at its best when the characters are confined to the hospital, with fear and suspicion ever present. The film occasionally utilises unecessary flashbacks that often add little to the plot, for example in showing the audience what has happened previously after a character has just explained the same thing. This tendency to show too much also applies to the crash sequence depicting the accident that led to Yoko’s death, which would have been more impactful with suggestive editing rather than showing what is a fairly underwhelming stunt.

For the most part “Masked Ward“is a solid pared back thriller, setting up a small cast in a single location with the viewers anxious to see who will survive the night. Later the film transitions into a morality tale about unscrupulous medical practices and revenge. The need to maintain the mystery early on means that many of the themes remain obscure for a long time which leaves the third act feeling like a different part of the story. Hayami’s guilt over Yoko’s death is largely abandoned in favour of Kawasaki’s story, which is interesting, but again suffers from a sudden shift in tone. The film may have been better focussing on the hosipital and treatment of patients early on to let the audience in on the secret prior to it becoming the central focus. The film works well as a tense crime thriller, with the fugitive armed-robber and his hostage holing up in the hospital; and the third act moral drama about what has been happening at the hospital is also interesting, but somewhat hamstrung by the film having that mystery element and inability to tell the audience that that is where we are heading. The film moves at a fast pace, with lots of great reveals, but feels a little disjointed, both in the script and editing, perhaps suffering slightly under the amount of plot threads and ideas it attempts to bring together.