by Jason Suzuki
Made as part of Toei’s straight-to-video V-cinema line, Shunichi Nagasaki brings a distinct voice to this cat and mouse thriller. While the commercial aspect is intact, steadily escalating in its action, the film avoids skin and favors psychological probing over physical.
Kiriko (Yuko Natori) is a bank teller embezzling money from her work, in cahoots with her boyfriend. Almost immediately into the film she is caught and jailed. Once out she can only find work as a taxi driver, working the late night shift. She can largely avoid the boys club of her work and doesn’t have to interact with the ones in the backseat. The setting is immediate post-bubble and a brief interaction with a religious fanatic foreshadow the subway sarin attack that would happen a few years later. Kiriko embodies the time: cut down and unknowingly headed towards violence.
Stranger moves at a quick pace, succinctly we get to know her past, we get an idea of how far she’s fallen after the conviction, and now we can get to the good stuff (stalking, terrorizing, etc.). A passenger leaves her a large note and tells her to keep the change. She can’t make out his face but notices the burns on his hand. Afterwards she’s left with a sense of dread that remains even after the turns in her take for the night. Eventually the man rides again and attacks her with a knife then later an axe.
It’s reminiscent to Duel in that the face of her pursuer is never shown. He’s either cloaked by a mixture of his getup and shadows when in person or in his Jeep when on the road or camped outside her apartment/work. The anonymity and unprovoked nature make you wonder if this is someone who was on the losing end of her fraudster past. Thankfully the identity of the stalker is not important so more time can be spent on how this causes Kiriko to confront her past. Her investigation also involves some fellow taxi drivers coming on too strong. The film almost shoehorns in a love interest but in one of the best moments of the film, she strikes up a friendship instead with a little boy who asks her to take him on the expressway.
The action set pieces are handled well, especially since most of them occur within the close quarters of her cab, but it’s the psychological aspects that really shine. The barren and apathetic Tokyo nightlife speak to a disenchantment similar to post-war noir.
Shunichi as writer/director and Natori’s performance bring a pedigree to the film. V-cinema is reminiscent of the pink film in how we sometimes associate it as a training ground for established masters like Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Takashi Miike, and Sion Sono. Shunichi was no amateur having previously worked with the Art Theatre Guild plus his Heart, Beating in the Dark is considered an underground masterpiece shot on 8mm. Natori was no stranger to competent direction having starred in films from Hideo Gosha and Nobuhiko Obayashi.
There’s not a whole lot out there on Shunichi: an interview with Midnight Eye and a Rotterdam retrospective back in ’06. He seems to be yet another overlooked filmmaker from this era of rising popularity in video.