KWEIF: Will & Harper (+the Bounty Hunter Trilogy)

KWEIF=Kent's Weekend in Film, because I did a Kent's Week in Film already this week (twice!). I took a couple days off work to decompress an watched a pile of movies, and that continued over the weekend.

This Weekend:
Will & Harper (2024, d. Josh Greenbaum - Netflix)

Killer's Mission (1969, d. Shigehiro Ozawa - bluray)

The Fort of Death (1969, d. Eiichi Kudo - bluray)

Eight Men to Kill (1972, d. Shigehiro Ozawa- bluray)

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Tactic number 1 of the conservative political playbook is to make the people afraid. Make them fearful, make them hate. Give them an enemy as the root cause of all their problems. Distract them from the real and exceeding complex issues of sustaining a democracy. Distract them from the glad-handing  deals, from the dissolving of social infrastructure, from the capitalism-run-wild that favours the few at the expense of the many. Keep them pointing fingers at anyone but the (primarily, but not exclusively) conservative political powers that are the true root of the problems.

Conservative politicians, and their public mouthpieces (from talk radio, to social media feeds, to 24 hour cable news channels) keep a large swath of populace under their sway through tactic number 1, and have been doing so for generations. They do so because it works. People want easy answers in a complex world. Explaining global economics or spelling out the complex chain of events that lead to a small town falling into ruin or understanding how a prosperous country slides into negative population growth and thus needs immigration to bolster it's economic infrastructure...well, the average person doesn't want to sit through that lecture. They just want to know who they should be angry at, and most conservative politicians have no moral compunction about pointing a finger. At any given time it's been Blacks or Mexicans or Asians or Muslims or gays or all of the above. It's only been recently that it's been trans people, and more specifically it seems to be pointing a finger at trans women.

The largely patriarchal world is a dangerous place for women. It always has been. Men have objectified and othered women as something less-than for centuries. Objects of desire, prizes, possessions, muses, tools, toys. When men don't see women as human, as equals they can do horrendous things. 

So imagine how scary it is when you've got politicians and political mouthpieces shouting to a massive and receptive population that you, as a trans woman are not even worthy of being an object of desire, a prize, possession, muse, tool or toy. That if you are not a man than you are nothing. It says a lot about how these men not only perceive trans women, but women in general.  But it's not that politicians and political mouthpieces are saying that trans women are nothing, they are actively saying trans women are predators, they are perverts, they are the root of leftist blabbetyblah (and these are the nicer things they say). They are making a populating dehumanize, hate and be angry towards a population that just want to be free, to have the liberty to live in a skin the is comfortable, to be who they feel they are inside on the outside rather than be trapped in a construct, in the confined definition that the patriarchal society has determined they should be.

Most trans people go through a period of deep depression and suicidal ideation before they come out. Most of us cannot truly understand this struggle, to feel so trapped by one's own skin by societal expectations that death seems like the most straightforward answer to it all.  And then imagine when a whole political segment is saying they would rather you kill yourself than wear the clothing of the opposite gender to what you were born with. It's frankly repulsive.

I have trans people in my life. I love, support and accept them unconditionally. Radical empathy should be mandatory teaching, not just in school but at work and throughout everyone's life. It's a health and safety issue. Not everyone has trans people in their life, or has encountered trans people socially, and so if you don't have exposure, it's easy to other, to give any credence to the inane ramblings of those political mouthpieces.  

Will Ferrell has made many movies which play well in conservative spaces. His comedies have rarely been political or exclusionary, they're usually pretty silly and play pretty broadly. He knows films like Step Brothers, Anchorman and Talladega Nights have earned him a wide audience of fans, and now he wants to attempt to engage that audience and introduce them to a trans woman, his dear friend Harper Steele.

Harper was, in her masculine disguise, a writer for Saturday Night Live when she met Will and they became fast friends, and remained very close over the decades. During the pandemic, Harper came out to everyone in her life as a trans woman, no longer able to tolerate living the lie she was living. Post-pandemic ("post"), the friends decided upon a road trip for the two of them to get reacquainted, for Will to meet Harper properly as the friend he's always known but now could truly know.

But the film is only half about Will meeting his friend in total, the other half is Harper coming to terms with being a trans woman in America, of exploring the spaces she used to freely engage with as a man...spaces that, by all accounts from news reports and political discourse, would be dangerous for her to enter.

With Will's celebrity presence acting as buffer, they set forth on a New York to L.A. trip that takes them to some of the most gorgeous vistas the world has to offer, and to some formative spaces in Harper's life, and to those rural red state places where she gets those leering looks that, if not for Will or the camera crew, could spell danger for her.

There are genuine moments of connections with people that Harper has that surprise her, but there are fresh wounds made by daring to even enter a space where she knows she's not wanted. I'm sure Will okayed it with Harper, but every time he announced her publicly as his friend who transitioned, I cringed. But it came from both a place of pride, and from of place of hope, that simply by stating he, Will Ferrell is an ally, he might get others to be so as well. It's bold, perhaps brave, but also naive. 

This is a funny, sweet, heartwarming film about friendship, but also intense, painful, and, at times, dispiriting film about Western society and its constructs, and the pain its very arbitrary and imaginary boundaries inflict upon much of the population.  

There were few times where I felt Harper was safe.  When she was among friends or family or alone with Will, I felt she felt at ease, and it was lovely to see. Every other public space felt extremely loaded, just bracing for someone to say something, to incite.  It makes me sad. I am worried for the trans people in my life, but also for those that I don't know. I'm most empathetic towards those who witness the discourse about them and decide not to come out, to stay trapped. I wish society wasn't so primitive, that it would evolve enough to see through patriarchal  rhetoric and conservative dogma, and see the spectrum of humanity for the beautiful thing it is.

I hope this film is effective, that cisgender people engage with it (I think it's much less vital for trans people, as it's not presenting them with much they don't already live or know), and learn and grow and become more open and empathetic. It's truly lovely.

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I had never heard of The Bounty Hunter Trilogy before, a trio of films in Japanese genres of jedaigeki and chambara from the late-60's early '70s starring Lone Wolf and Cub's Tomisaburo Wakayama.  (If you don't know these terms, that's okay, because I don't really either.  "Jedaigeki" are basically period dramas, where "chambara" are the subgenre of sword fighting films. Both are kind of used, maybe inaccurately (?) as a general term to reference samurai movies.) I'm not well versed in these genres largely because they weren't very accessible when I was younger. Outside of Kurosawa and Godzilla, there wasn't a lot of access to Japanese cinema until the double-boom of Power Rangers and Pokemon started a whole mass wave of interest in Japanese entertainment, primarily manga and anime.

The chambara I started with were the Kurosawa movies, mainly through the references to them in my readings about Star Wars (if you look at the genre terms above, you see where Lucas got "Jedi" from). Kurosawa's samurai films are gorgeous, intelligent, and masterful cinema. But what I glommed onto most immediately was the pulpier, more violent, more stripped-down Lone Wolf and Cub. I watched most of the films and some of the TV series in the early 2000s thanks to an incredible local video store when I moved to Toronto (no longer exists sadly).  I coveted the collection for years, and finally acquired the six-film series on blu-ray last year. I really need to review it. I got halfway through before I got distracted. 

Outside of Kurosawa and Lone Wolf and Cub I haven't explored the jedaigeki much, in part because there's just so much of it out there, and also because it's still not extremely accessible. Unlike Chinese martial arts films, the jedaigeki and chambara films haven't been Sunday afternoon cable classics, video store hallmarks, or Tubi essentials. If you want to watch them, you have to seek them out, and if you don't really know what you're looking for it can be difficult (and expensive) to traverse.

I only learned about The Bounty Hunter Trilogy by visiting one of my local video stores (we have a few in Toronto, thank the gods - Bay Street Video, Eyesore Cinema, and Vinegar Syndrome, to name three) and spying the boxed set on the shelf. Released by Radiance and limited to 3000 copies, it features a quarter-sleeve on the box that tells you what this is: "Tomisaburo Wakayama [stars] in this triptych of violent samurai spectacles inspired by James Bond and spaghetti westerns." 

Films blending the genres of samurai, British super spy and Italian westerns...plus Wakayama in the lead? I had to see these.

Killer's Mission most fully realizes this promise of genre-blending. Wakayama plays Shikoro Ichibei, a doctor who moonlights as a "bounty hunter" (we'll get to that), taking missions to help fund his medical practice. The premise of this first in the series seems to stem from the same historical incident as James Clavell's story for Shogun. A Dutch ship is possibly selling firearms to a rogue state that could give them the potential power to overthrow the Shogun.  Ichibei is hired to prevent the sale from happening by any means necessary.

Ichibei suits up, assembling his armory of transforming weapons and hidden gadgets like an 18th century Japanese super-spy. It could only have been better if there was actually a quartermaster there who were devised these gadgets and explained their use to him.  He sets out on his mission using disguises, lies, and trickery, as well as lightning fast reflexes, expert swordsmanship, and a butt load of super-spy testosterone to make his way to his destinations.

Much like Sean Connery's Bond, Ichibei is a lustful being who thinks he's god's gift to women. In this same movie he tricks one woman into sympathy fucking him by pretending to be a blind man, and fights a female ninja who he'd rather be kissing.  There's a lot of that "the lady doth protest too much" attitude here where Ichibei forcefully kisses someone but though they initially resist, they ultimately cannot resist his manly manliness (and what a man, as a clowning, Don Knotts-esque sidekick catches a look at Ichibei's dick in the lavatory and is beyond impressed and effusively complimentary). This film, and the series, is not the best at serving its female characters, though Ichibei is less handsy in the subsequent films. It's one of the unfortunate ways in which it's in fitting with the Bond-ian stereotype.

Also like Bond films, Killer's Mission gets pretty convoluted plot-wise, as the political side of things weaves its way through multiple double-crosses and some shifting of allegiances where the motivation isn't entirely clear.

What the film lacks in plot clarity and respect for women, it almost makes up for in style. It's score is so 60's espionage with emphatic, propulsive guitars and horns (with just a little bit of surf energy), that it sets the vibe. The character, the swagger, the "romance" and even the almost free-flowing nature of the mission all have that 60's super-spy tinge to it, but in the guise of Japanese samurai tropes.

It's the staging though that evokes Westerns. The fights all have a dusty showdown nature to them, the camera closing in on Wakayama's eyes like he's Clint Eastwood, he will quickdraw his sword and return it to his sheath like a sheriff will his six-shooter in a showdown shootout.  It's hard not to be charmed by the mishmash.

The subsequent films in the series, then, are that much more a disappointment in their abandoning or the spy genre. While the music cues remain very brassy, the second, and especially the third in the series lean more into to the samurai-meets-western.

Of the three, I think The Fort of Death is my least favourite, primarily because it is effectively a lower budget, more primitive riff on Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. It's the knock-off version, like Orca to Jaws, or Battle Beyond the Stars to Star Wars. It seems cheaper, more exploitative, and yet it's also not without its excitement or charms. While it mostly abandons the super spy element it adopts the 50's/60's British-esque war movie into its repertoire.

A coalition of farmers is being taxed literally to death by its regional lordship. They've protested and pleaded but their lordship has his own political aspirations, and whatever he achieves will be on the backs of the working class. They either fall in line, or get shut down. Though it doesn't pay much, and Ichibei is not a man to interfere in politics, he cannot dismiss the suffering of others, nor can he abide bullies.

He gathers a team, including his ninja love interest from last film (though their relationship has seemingly gone largely platonic since then) and they descend upon the fortified wall. Ichibei takes command and organizes the people, their few fighters, and the unruly ronin who have gathered.  They would be overwhelmed by the lord's forces if not for the gatling gun Ichibei has brought with him (possibly recovered from those Dutch traders he defeated in the prior film?)

There's something about gunplay in a samurai film I really, really don't like. Obviously guns were a game changer after ages of swords and arrows, and this ugly progression naturally would hit Japan's shores, but there's something so much more elegant and tangible to swordplay and arrows that is lost when you have people falling over after being hit with invisible bullets. The special spray of arterial blood is lost as hammy extras overplay their falling-over-after-being-shot moments.

That said, it's still pretty exciting, and has kind of a first-person-shooter feel to it when the forces are just so overwhelming that they're pretty much flooding the frame of the camera and being shot by Ichibei's gun at point blank range.  It does feel effectively overwhelming.

In terms of Ichibei being the number-one-lover-man-in-Japan, the film turns the tables. A widow in the village assaults Ichibei, taking his pants off while he sleeps and tries to force herself upon him repeatedly as he attempts to flee. It's played semi-comedically, but assault is assault. It's not right when Ichibei was doing it in the prior film and it's not fair play to have the tables reversed.  Another widow, who has gone mad following the deaths of her husband and baby, also assails Ichibei, and literally throws him around, mirroring his first encounter with his ninja love in Killer's Mission.

The film ends with a field of dead and the ruins of a community. An inspector from the Shogunate finally arrives to assess the conflict, but obviously too late to do anything about it. It's a dark note, left with the little promise of the children of the village emerging and being embraced by the farmers of neighboring communities.

These films do not shy away from being critical of government, and the corruption that lies within. Ichibei is often an agent for the government but he is not of the government.

Eight Men to Kill opens with a gold heist, which makes its way to Ichibei doubly so. First the government implores his assistance in recovering the gold as it's crucial to staving off an economic collapse. Second, a witness to the heist found a gold piece and swallowed it, but it's causing severe intestinal issues and Ichibei needs to operate on him.  Operations on screen before sterile environments really wig me out.

So Ichibei suits up and heads out to discover the whereabouts of the gold. He meets and kills and helps many people along the way. Unlike the first film, which establishes Ichibei as a sort of solitary badass, and the second film where he's like a military general, here he's a man for the people. His mission to recover the gold is so he can get a cut of it to fund more medical outposts in the region, something he criticizes his government contacts for not doing.

Eight Men to Kill is framed almost entirely as a western. The score still retains its super-spy tenor, but mixes in a lot more Morricone influence than before. The visuals are exceptionally dusty, and even the Japanese villages seem to be staged more in a way like Western towns, ready for a showdown.

There's also a lot more gunplay. While The Fort of Death was wartime gunplay, along with swords and arrows, there's more gunplay than swordplay here, a lot of horse chases as well. It's more American/spaghetti western than jedaigeki. Even Ichibei's outfit looks more gunslinger than samurai (he actually looks more like the Friendly Giant, if I'm being honest.) The mustard coloured outfit and the shaggy near-afro screams early 1970's.

While the first film was complicated by its political intrigue, here's its complicated by the ever-shifting allegiances of the characters. Everyone's shifting who they are aiding and it's not like they're double-agents, they just keep shifting sides. In the end I really lost track of who was supporting whom and what individual motivations were.

On the women front, again, not great. Ichibei threatens a sex worker who has info about the gold. She refuses to give up her knowledge and offers herself to him basically as a distraction. About the only Bond-ian element remaining in this film is the fact he fucks the villainess so good she immediately falls in love with him and leads him to the man with the gold, and she starts acting irrationally out of her uncontrollable affection for Ichibei.

The end of the film is very dark, and once again reiterates this films seemingly connective tissue about governments needing to be for the people and not exist for power, wealth and control.

Despite being the most misogynistic of the three films, Killer's Mission was the most successful at what it promised on the box (and honestly the misogyny of the film is absolutely aping James Bond, in an almost child-like, they-don't-really-know-what-they're-doing fashion) and the one I liked the most. I wished they had stuck with the super-spy genre and leaned into its tropes more. Period-specific super-spies may not be all that accurate but it's pretty goddamn fun. 

Chambara films already have a western feel to them as is, so leaning more into the Sergio Leone of it all isn't really redefining the boundaries of samurai movies... or maybe it's that I just care less about westerns than I do about spy movies.

These three films aren't great cinema, they aren't giving Kurosawa any challenges. They're pulp, their entertainment, and much like Ichibei himself they get the job done pretty efficiently (all of them clocking in around 90 minutes).  Yet, I really would like there to be more of these. It's surprising there weren't more of these, or that they didn't go on to be a TV series like Lone WOlf and Cub or Zatoichi.