Just saw a terrific Taiwanese-Japanese noir movie called SLEEPLESS TOWN, which deals with the politics of the immigrant Chinese mafia gangs of the Ginza district of Tokyo. This world is generally hidden from the mainstream of Japanese society, with ties to the Mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwanese triad gangs.
I was amazed at how closely the film follows Hammett's original narrative model. KEIJI, the main character, is our Continental Op archetype, a half- breed Japanese-Chinese deemed an outsider from both worlds due to his mix heritage, who is usually called in by the gangs when they don't want to get their hands dirty.
The story takes place over three days, when Keiji is pressured from both minor gang bosses and visiting Mainland Overlords to sort out a spot of bother involving stolen money and the rumoured return from hiding of his best friend, an unstable hitman who carried out a killing a year ago, for which Keiji has been held partly responsible ever since.
Keiji has three days to bring everything together in a satisfactory manner or he's dead. They won't let him leave town, and he doesn't want to, anyway. Further complicating matters is the appearance of his best friend's girlfriend/sister (a symbol of corruption and destroyed innocence in the story), an utterly whacked-out compulsive liar who may not be who she claims. Keiji is charged with saving her, in exchange for his best friend carrying out a hit and sacrificing himself to save Keiji's hide. Keiji knows he can't trust the girl, even as he's falling in love with her.
This is the best noir I've seen for years. The plot is intricate as hell, and the characterisations are brilliant. Keiji is, like the Op in THE GLASS KEY and Gabriel Byrne in MILLER'S CROSSING, a seemingly passive fallguy who in fact is seeing things from every angle and manipulating events furiously in order to save himself and prevent his world from going down in flames, still trying to do the right thing. His half-breed-outsider status is a terrific motivation for what drives him. Played by Takeshi Kaneshiro (introduced to us in Wong Kar-Wai's CHUNGKING EXPRESS and FALLEN ANGELS, and himself half- Japanese and Taiwanese), the character is in every scene, and conveys the wheels turning behind his eyes, and the pain of being forced to betray those he loves, cementing Kaneshiro's blossoming into a full-blown leading man.
The femme fatale is also the freshest treatment of the archetype I've seen this decade, being both dangerous and tragic,with utterly believable motivations. The direction is sensuous and subtle, alternating between a claustrophobic neon-lit hell one moment and great close-ups that treat faces like the most mysterious landscapes of them all.
Just when you think Noir has burned out its viability, along comes something that proves the genre can still mean something. If you ever get a chance, catch this film.
Adi
