This might have been an interesting film, if you could identify the players. I wanted to see Robert Ryan act in this film. Unfortunately I was unable to find a single close-up of him (or anyone else, for that matter). Everything appears to have been sacrificed to the Cinemascope camera's broad vision. What results is a wide-shot travelogue of post -war Japan, interrupted by a gangster film. It's the kind of wide-shot stuff home video cameras capture on vacation - nice too look at but nothing about the tourists themselves. The gangsters are formerly bad GIs who now stand out among the native population of post war Japan like well dressed IBM employees in Baghdad. How they are to conduct their business inconspicuously and hide out in a country like Japan was apparently not a problem anyone dealt with. (reminds one of the dilemma of Butch Cassidy & Sundance in South America) The only real advantage I can see to the character destroying technique used here is that one at least does not have to see a close-up of Robert Stack. This film confirmed what I had always suspected about him. In god knows how many years in front of the camera, he never changed his facial expression once. Maybe the director saw this right away, since Stack's scenes all come first. Can we assume he tried a few close-ups, saw Stack's patented impression of a man who appears to be annoyed to have to talk to anyone about anything - and sensibly decided to shoot a travelogue?
Review of House of Bamboo
