Tokyo Drifter, one of the better-known films to spring from the fertile imagination of director Seijun Suzuki, is not nearly as outrageous as some of his other pictures -- especially the must-see Branded to Kill, which was made around the same time. The film's convoluted narrative gives off the strange air of being made up as it goes along, (another trademark of the filmmaker's avant-garde style) which will impress some viewers while turning others away. Revolving around issues of loyalty in the dangerous world of the yakuza, Tokyo Drifter follows a very-committed right-hand man whose world changes when his boss decides to leave behind a life of crime. Cinematically speaking, the vivid sets (many of them designed in splashy, overwhelmingly chromatic color schemes -- a purple room, a white room, a yellow room, and so on) are arguably the movie's finest achievement.
Review of Tokyo Drifter
