The Viper Brothers (1971)

directed by Sadao Nakajima

Japan

87 minutes

3.5 stars out of 5

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Does anybody else remember the joke where somebody hears a sinister-sounding guy outside his door saying "I am the viper! I am the viper!" and he's all scared until finally the guy says "I come to vipe your vindows"? That isn't relevant here, just thought I'd mention it.

I don't believe I've ever reviewed a yakuza movie before, mostly because the vast majority of them tend to blend together in my brain. I always have fun watching them, but afterward I sometimes have trouble remembering exactly what went on in which one; exceptions made for the really really good ones, the classics of the genre like Violent Streets and Cops vs. Thugs. While The Viper Brothers isn't the single greatest yakuza movie of all time, the strength of its two leads and the solid direction by possibly my favorite yakuza director Sadao Nakajima make this one more memorable than your average outing.

The film follows two sworn brothers, Masa (Bunta Sugawara) and Katsuji (Tamio Kawachi), who are more enthusiastic about the idea of being yakuza than they are about actually being yakuza. The first shot of the film shows Masa getting out of his 12th stint in jail, and we can tell right away from how the shot is framed that this is a movie with style: Masa stands dwarfed by the massive wall outside the jail, looming over him almost like it's threatening to swallow him back up - which it will, eventually, and probably for the rest of his life. His brother Katsuji on the outside quickly gets him up to speed on all the latest fashions among the modern punks and they have a bad time trying to eat at a fancy French restaurant. All of this is to introduce us to them as characters but also, more subtly, to introduce one of two female characters, Sayako (Tomomi Satō), who Katsuji tries to pay to get her to have sex with Masa. (The movie is not as bad about women as a lot of yakuza flicks, but it's still gross-ish.)

While The Viper Brothers isn't an out-and-out comedy, it does have some humorous elements. But that humor is used in service of what is actually a fairly devastating bigger picture. Masa and Katsuji's antics as they try as hard as possible to perform the duties involved in being Bad Dudes are funny, but ultimately this is a story about two guys who were cast aside by the world and are spending their lives self-destructively trying to figure out how to fit into whatever parts of society are left to them after growing up in orphanages and juvie leaves them with no practical skills other than dirty tricks and violence. They aren't "bad people" - Masa almost instantly has concern for the film's secondary female character, a 15-year-old girl named Yuki (Keiko Yamada) who has dropped out of school to care for her siblings, and Katsuji eventually feels bad for stealing some fruit.

There's a thing about masculinity here that I thought was really interesting too - Masa begging practically on his hands and knees to be given a tattoo because he's so certain that that's the key to finally Being A Man, finally making something of himself, as if the role he so desires is something he can just put on and wear, externally, superficially. It would be easier if it was.

Essentially the entire reason why I wanted to review this is because there are two moments that made me think "okay, this is not your typical yakuza movie". The first was when Masa and Katsuji are driving to the final raid and all the background noise drops out and is replaced with a woman's voice singing. We the viewers can hear it but so do the characters, somehow, and Katsuji tries to remember why he knows it - maybe it was his mother who sang it for him, he says, and both seem to relive, for a moment, life before they were forced to fend for themselves. The second moment is the very last shot of the film, the two of them walking together in the rain as we see their elaborate back tattoos washing off. I thought that was just one of the most brilliant shots I've ever seen in a yakuza movie. It's not how you expect that sort of thing to end; usually the main characters end up dying in a blaze of glory or getting sent to jail, or returning to fight again in the sequel. But Masa and Katsuji just kind of... decide to call it quits. We see the remnants of their old life of violence literally washing away. It was a beautiful way to end a movie that, while it had a slightly uneven second act, is one of the better yakuza films I've watched recently.