Big Time Gambling Boss

The 4th entry in a 10-chapter film saga from Toei, Big Time Gambling Boss (1968) shuffles the yakuza deck and deals out its story in a manner unique to the cluttered criminal underworld genre.  There’s still some swordplay and stabbing, but director Kosaku Yamashita emphasizes internal conflicts with a surprisingly mature and restrained take on allegiance to the gangster code versus a strong moral compass.  Alternately glorifying and condemning the yakuza lifestyle, the film offers up a complicated character drama that earned high praise from writer / director Paul Schrader who called it an “art house rose blooming from exploitation roots.” 

After the leader of the Tenryu clan suffers a debilitating stroke, a plot is hatched from within to push the clan into risky territory involving drugs and foreign contraband.  Senba (Nobuo Kaneko) stirs the pot by pitting several possible successors against one another, including Nakai (Koji Tsuruta) and Matsuda (Tomisaburo Wakayama), sworn brothers who find themselves at odds over adhering to old traditions or fighting against the system.  Their argument slowly dissolves into all-out war as the eventual breakdown of their individual codes of honor become too much to bear.

 

Big Time Gambling Boss is the perfect example of why fans sift through thousands of average genre films:  it rises above the familiar yakuza formula despite working with the same key ingredients.  With a script by Kazuo Kasahara, whose screenplay for Battles Without Honor and Humanity would kickstart the genre again in the ‘70s, the political squabbling and double-crosses have much more personal stakes.  The relationship between Nakai and Matsuda is a common one in yakuza cinema, romanticizing the bonds of honor and loyalty in a world that is otherwise emotionally ruthless.  But rarely has it been presented with such an epic sense of tragic inevitability.  Reigning in the violence – and the typically over-the-top performances – Big Time Gambling Boss hits you where it hurts the most…which is where you least expect it. 

 

One of the first Blu-ray titles released from the new Radiance Films label, it’s an auspicious start that presents the film (likely a first time watch for many) in its best light, starting with a perfectly gorgeous transfer and continuing with a slate of extras (a video essay on yakuza film history and another on BTGB specifically) enhanced with a limited edition booklet with new writing on the film by Stuart Galbraith and Hayley Scanlon.

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