Got a dead body you need disposed of? For such occasions, there are three men in Japan with a pickup truck who will help you get rid of your problem — for a price. Welcome to the wacky underworld of Japanese director Katsuhito Ishii’s Smuggler.
Stuck with a wrongly accrued yakuza debt, failed actor Kinuta (Satoshi Tsumabuki) gets a loan from a mysterious goth-Lolita banker, but in order to repay it he must work with silent tough guy Joe (Masatoshi Nagase) and his leprechaun-like sidekick, transporting sensitive items in the dead of night for shady clients with lots of yen.
When they haul the body of a murdered yakuza boss, they become targets of his psychotic foot soldier Kawashima, a unibrowed sadist decked out in pinstripes who pledges bloody revenge on everyone who took part in the deed. Their lives are further imperiled when they must transport, Hannibal Lecter– style, the mysterious ultra-assassin known as Vertebrae (Masanobu Ando), who was responsible for the killing.
Establishing cult status with his films Shark Skin Man, Peach Hip Girl and Funky Forest, Ishii is widely recognized for his work on the animated “O-Ren Ishii” sequence of Kill Bill Vol. 1, which, oddly enough, sets the stage for his live-action work — a comic-inspired glam underworld of crazy, bespoke yakuza killers and outcasts in absurd situations.
Smuggler is chock full of Ishii’s brand of wacky, convention-twisting humour, executed with his signature hyper-kinetic style. The film flips from outrageous social situations to over-the-top, slo-mo kills in which heads crack and blood spurts at the hands of killing-machine Vertebrae — who gives Ichithe Killer a run for his money. Ando almost steals the show as Vertebrae, with his Bruce Lee-like build, his scarred face and torso, and his weapon of choice — like Lee’s — the deadly nunchaku! –TIFF
