Movies: Japanese noir

When 150 guns are stolen from Iwakuni base and two police officers are shot dead, a detective criminal tries to find out the truth....

Kaze is a philandering TV producer. His wife and nine of his mistresses conspire to kill him. However each woman would rather keep him alive, as long as she was the only woman in his life....

College students come up with a scam to rob a gambling house. When it comes time to collect, the money isn't there, leading the young men into even more serious crime....

Yoshida's first feature follows the lives of young students against a background of jazz, emptiness and boredom. The plot is fairly simple: a "good-for-nothing" from a poor background falls in love with the young secretary of his rich friend's father...

The murder of the chief official of Kobe city's Customs triggers an investigation of a prostitution ring called the 'Yellow Line' that sells Japanese women. A hired assassin is betrayed by his organization, and kidnaps a woman who happens to be the g...

Koreyoshi Kurahara's ingeniously plotted, pocket-size noir concerns the intertwined fates of a desperate bank manager, blackmailed for book-cooking, and his resentful but timid underling, passed over for a promotion. The marvelously moody Intimidatio...

Journalist Kuroki is investigating clandestine arms sales to Southeast Asia. He discovers that the point man in an arms trade was also involved in the cover-up of a murder on an American base during the Allied Occupation. The film rolls along as a su...

A former boxer gets involved with a club hostess trying to escape the clutches of her gangster employer....

A top police-guard, charged with protecting a visiting politician and ruthless dictator, contends with an assassin set to kill the man....

Based on the original novel by Tokuda Shusei, adapted by frequent Masumura scribe Kaneto Shindo, this downbeat melodrama features a battle of women for the affections and commitment of the same man, a handsome car salesman. Masuko is the number one h...

Suspense drama about a married salaryman whose affair with one of his co-workers is compromised when, returning from a clandestine meeting with his lover, he runs into a neighbor who is later accused of murder. Questioned by police about the neighbor...

A youth drama set in a Japanese university which is home to a group of active, leftist students....

After a successful robbery the culprits, from very different backgrounds, at once turn on each other....

Freelance reporter “Scoop” Machida is hot on the trail of a prostitution ring called the Black Line, when he is framed for the murder of a young woman. Forced to clear his own name, the handsome journalist sinks deeper into the Black Line’s rotten s...

When a married man begins an affair with a woman from his past, he comes to suspect her young son intends to murder him....

Set in post-war Japan, a group of five, four men and one woman, gathers in the basement of a butcher shop to dig up a cache of morphine buried during the war. A grimly humorous tale of twisted relationships as one by one each of the group is eliminat...

Two young crooks who scam betters in the race track are employed by a yakuza gang called the Shigemori Syndicate to steal a shipment of handguns from a rival gang. Somewhere in the process they find themselves on the run from their own gang and one o...

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When two brothers steal a valuable heirloom from an elderly Japanese woman, they unknowingly awaken her demigod son, Osaru, who does not take kindly to thieves....

A noir drama depicting the downfall of a veteran detective who hates evil and falls into its depths. Ace detective Sugai pursues Chiyo, the mistress of a man who was arrested for extortion, and takes advantage of her weakness. However, as his colleag...