Moving beyond the true stories dramatized in the first two episodes of the Battles Without Honour and Humanity series, director Kinji Fukasaku and screenwriter Kazuo Kasahara embark on their most complex narrative yet in Proxy War, a multi-character web of alliances and betrayals set against the economic growth of Japan as it prepares to hostthe 1964 Olympic games.1960. A power vacuum is formed within the Muraoka family when underboss Uchimoto (Takeshi Katô) refuses to avenge the assassination of a superior. With the help of series hero Shôzô Hirono (Bunta Sugawara), Uchimoto pledges loyalty to the powerful Akashi gang, but is soon expelled from the Muraoka for the act. Meanwhile, Akashi rivals the Shinwa Group form their own pact with Muraoka, and the enmity between the two gangs threatens to erupt into bloody violence across all of western Japan.The labyrinthine plotline of Proxy War—which continues in episode four, Police Tactics— approaches pure Jacobean drama as power players, kingmakers, and petty soldiers clash weapons and words in a stylised ritual of alliances and betrayals. Considered by many critics to be the best episode of the series, Proxy War is complex crime drama of the highest order.
Up Next in Yakuza
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Battles Without Honor and Humanity: P...
Continuing the storyline begun in episode three of the Battles Without Honour and Humanity series, Police Tactics sees director Kinji Fukasaku and screenwriter Kazuo Kasahara further depicting the life-and-death struggle of the gangsters of Hiroshima and Kure, even as the rest of Japan is beginni...
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Battles Without Honor and Humanity: F...
The Final Episode of the Battles Without Honour and Humanity series brought a new, more contemporary mood to the film and its characters. The yakuza may be starting to resemble a legitimate business, but director Kinji Fukasaku, working with new screenwriter Kôji Takada, never lets the audience f...
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New Battles Without Honor and Humanity
Bunta Sugawara is Miyoshi, a low-level assassin of the Yamamori gang who is sent to jail after a bungled hit. While in stir, family member Aoki (Lone Wolf and Cub's Tomisaburo Wakayama) attempts to seize power from the boss, and Miyoshi finds himself stuck between the two factions with no honoura...
