WOLVES, PIGS AND MEN And VIOLENT PANIC: THE BIG CRASH: Two Exclusive Clips From The Upcoming Film Movement Classics Titles Arriving Friday
Film Movement Classics is readying the VOD and Digital releases of two classic titles – restored in 2K – from one of the most lauded filmographies in world cinema history. Kinji Fukasaku’s Wolves, Pigs and Men (1964), and Violent Panic: The Big Crash (1976) are set to stream on the SVOD network this Friday, and we have a pair of clips from both films which we can share exclusively.
Japanese director and genre master Kinji Fukasaku is often remembered amongst cineastes for his final film, BATTLE ROYALE (2000), but in his home country, the prolific auteur – across a 40-year career, he directed over sixty movies, received three Japanese Academy Film Prizes for best director, and helped redefine many genres, most notably the Yakuza genre – was respected for a broad range of films that often used violence to make statements about social control, authority, and individual freedom.
Of the many filmmakers associated with the Japanese crime film, however, perhaps none is as synonymous with the genre than Fukasaku. With his signature kinetic style and cinematic violence exploring the chaos of postwar Japan, his Yakuza films are now considered unmissable classics where nihilistic characters combine with freeze-frame flashbacks, hand-held camera, and dynamic editing to propel the story.
This September, Film Movement delivers two of Fukasaku’s best loved genre films digitally restored in 2K from the original film elements: WOLVES, PIGS AND MEN and VIOLENT PANIC: THE BIG CRASH.
The first clip is from Wolves, Pigs and Men with leading man Ken Takakura starring. The story centers on an ex-con whose efforts to rob his former boss of the Iwasaki Group leads to a violent impasse with his younger brother, Sabu (Kinya Kitaoji) and his band of street-running friends, and his older brother Kuroki (Rentaro Mikuni) who is still a member.
The clip features Takakura and his cohort, Mizuhara (Shinjiro Ehara) in a psy-ops ploy to coerce Sabu into giving up the location of the money before the Iwasaki Group can zero in. It’s a move that involves gut-wrenching torture and suffering, among other horrors in the film ado with assault.
The second clip comes from Violent Panic: The Big Crash, presented in pristine color, stars Tsunehiko Watase in the role of Takashi, in a story that firmly hits the ground running as we follow an elusive bank robber’s breakneck quest to get out of Japan or die trying, with the help of his alluring lover, Michi, played by Mika Sugimoto. The clip features Watase opposite famed Toei veteran Hideo Murota in a clash over a bag of cash with the cops hot on Takashi’s tail.
Check out the clips below!
