Postman Blues

[Ono Seiko and Aaron Gerow]

Here, quite belatedly, is my review of Sabu's _Postman Blues_.

Aaron Gerow




Postman Blues

Japanese title: Posutoman burusu
Production Company: F.T.B., Suplex Inc., Television Tokyo Channel 12,
Nikkatsu
Release: 16 August 1997
Length: 110 min.
Format: 35 mm; 1:1.85
Color: Color

Staff:
   o Director: Sabu
   o Executive Producer: Satani Hidemi
   o Screenplay: Sabu
   o Original Story: Sabu
   o Photography: Kuriyama Shuji
   o Music: Sato Koya
   o Art Director: Nishimura Toru
   o Editor: Kakesu Shuichi

Cast:
   o Sawaki: Tsutsumi Shin'ichi
   o Kyoko: Toyama Kyoko
   o Joe: Ozugi Ren
   o Noguchi Shuji: Horibe Keisuke
   o Det. Domon Taizo: Shimizu Hiroshi
   o Ran: Takizawa Ryoko
   o Profiler: Taguchi Tomoro
   o Hanta: Maro Akaji

Review:

                      'Postman' Rings with High Action

"Does your heart ever thump with excitement like it did when you were a
kid?" The yakuza Noguchi (Horibe Keisuke) poses this question to his
childhood friend Sawaki (Tsutsumi Shin'ichi) at the beginning of Postman
Blues, but it could equally be directed at the audience. How long has it
been since a Japanese movie really made your adrenaline flow?

If it has been a while, the Postman Blues signals the end to your long 
wait.
Just as Sawaki, a bored postman stung by Noguchi's query, in the end opts 
to
get off the beaten path of postal delivery to seek his own thrills, 
director
Sabu veers from a conventional Japanese cinema defined by either cheap
diversions or dolorous art to deliver his own wonderful package of movie
excitement.

The content we get is not exactly new: Sabu's entertainment strategy does
not involve dumping convention out the window, but rather wittily playing
with and parodying it. Part of the fun is just to sit back and spot movie
citations ranging from old Nikkatsu action films and Takakura Ken to
Chungking Express and Jean Reno.

The problem of convention is, in fact, the center of Sabu's comedic world.
Last year's hilarious Dangan Runner, which played to great applause at the
Berlin Film Festival, featured three idiot heroes and a cast of bungling
characters almost fatally in love with macho stereotypes. This time,
however, Sawaki is less an admirer of these constraining images than their
unknowing victim.

Emerging from Noguchi's apartment, Sawaki is spotted by cops staking out 
the
young gangster. Wondering why a postman would enter the apartment, they
figure Sawaki must be some kind of delivery man and begin following him.
After a few twists and turns involving drugs, a severed finger (cut by
Noguchi in yakuza style), and some other details too absurd to explain 
here,
the cops and their criminal profiler become certain that this postman is
really a sexually peverted, drug-addicted, mass murdering gang kingpin who
likes to dismember his victims.

In reality, Sawaki just wants to be something more than a postman, since
that's how everyone seems to define him. His break from the routine is to
pursue a love affair with Kyoko (Toyama Kyoko), a terminally-ill cancer
patient whose letter he finds in his bag.

That romance is probably the most conventional and cloying part of Postman
Blues, but it indicates how kindly Sabu looks upon characters with even the
most cliched dreams if they are romantically hopeless. Beyond Sawaki,
another such dreamer is the hitman Joe (Osugi Ren), whom Sawaki befriends 
at
Kyoko's hospital, would win the Killer of Killers competition if it wasn't
for the presence of a more powerful rival - the fatal killer inside his
body.

Just as the mad dash in Dangan Runner enabled its heroes to transcend their
categorized existence, it is Sawaki's frentic bike ride against the clock 
to
meet Kyoko - all undertaken without knowledge of the police's high-tech
pursuit - that gives him his thrills and us ours. The decision of Noguchi
and Joe to help him also gives meaning to their lives.

But it is the cops with their roadblocks and blocked minds that makes them
representative of all that is stifling about modern society. Despite their
own bungling stupidity and a few good eggs, they are more formidable than
the self-destructive fools in Dangan Runner. Their power drives up the ante
and makes the smashing conclusion to Postman Blues that much more potent 
and
adrenaline-filled. Postman Blues is an action comedy, one of the better 
ones
in years. But as the "blues" in the title indicates, its world view is
ultimately pessimistic. For Sabu, escape from this world must inevitably
involve the most extreme forms of transcendence. Yet it is lucky for us 
that
Sabu's own effort to rise above the dull clouds of tired Japanese film
entertainment, through raucous and wonderfully radical, need not go that
far.

Reviewed by Aaron Gerow
onogerow at gorilla.or.jp

Originally appeared in The Daily Yomiuri, 28 August 1997, p. 9.

Copyright 1997: The Daily Yomiuri and Aaron Gerow