Golgo 13: Kowloon Assignment
Year: 1977
Director: Noda Yukio
Rating: 7.5
Four years after Golgo 13, the deadly assassin
returns in this film with a new face as Ken Takakura is replaced by another
action legend, Sonny Chiba. Both of them are great presences in their respective
film - unsmiling, unsentimental, inexpressive killers - but one advantage
that Chiba has over Takakura is his physical prowess and martial arts training.
And he uses it to good advantage in the film with some good hand to hand
combat scenes and hanging from a cliff top for a clear shot. This film also
appears to have a bigger budget, more energy, crisper action and more of
it. Director Yukio Noda keeps the film moving quickly as he had done previously
in Yakuza Deka (also with Chiba) and the wonderfully deranged Zero Woman:
Red Handcuffs. This is a pretty enjoyable film for what it attempts to do.
It also has some parallels with John Woo's
The Killer as it follows two storylines - Golgo 13 trying to locate and kill
his target and a HK policeman is chasing after him as well as Golgo's target.
The policeman is played by Lun Chia who co-incidentally has a striking resemblance
to Danny Lee (who played the cop in The Killer). Reporting to him is an undercover
knife throwing police woman played by Chiba's protégé, Etsuko
Shihomi, who doesn't get nearly as much screen time as I had been hoping
for. Another actress that you might identify is Dana - which is the only
name she went by in a few sleazy Shaw Brothers films like Sex for Sale, Girl
with the Long Hair and Black Magic. Here she is the mistress to one of the
bad guys and shows her charms at one point. I remembered them well. In a
small role as Golgo's friend in Hong Kong is Koji Tsuruta, who along with
Takakura had been a huge star in the Ninkyo Eiga films of the 1960's.
Golgo 13 takes a contract from a top drug
dealer in Miami (after shooting two of his men in a high-rise 500 yards away
just for the hell of it - like a calling card) to go to Hong Kong and kill
his man there who he suspects is cheating him. This version of Golgo 13 is
slightly nicer than in the first one as he saves a girl from the police (Takakura
would have walked away) and is then forced to kill about ten bad guys who
are after her. So there is also a good body count going here about 15 minutes
into the film. It climbs higher.
Chiba is great in this film - more a scowling
presence than an actor as he hardly has any dialogue. People try and engage
him in dialogue but he just gives them a fierce look that would shrink your
testicles. I wonder why neither of the films was turned into a series as
was often the habit of Japanese producers back then - too bad because Golgo
13 is a great if slightly cartoonish character I would like to see more of.
