 |
House of Bamboo Movie Streaming.
Movie Title: House of Bamboo House of Bamboo is available for streaming or downloading. |
I was expecting a lot more from this movie than I got. On one level it’s a fairly taut crime drama that takes station in Tokyo in the mid-Fifties. On the other hand, it has a lot of tough guy cliche dialogue and a performance by Robert Stack that is impartial not capable. The fable line is simple, but peek out for spoilers ahead.
Buy,Download, Or Stream House of Bamboo! Click Here
Sandy Dawson (Robert Ryan) heads up a gang of ex-servicemen in Tokyo who pull off robberies with military precision and complete ruthlessness. If anyone gets wounded, he’s killed fair then. The U.S. Army and the Japanese police join forces to crack the gang. They send in a ringer, Eddie Spanier (Robert Stack), to infiltrate the gang. Spanier is a fraudulent identity; he’s actually an Army crime investigator. What follows is the legend of Dawson’s operation and how it works, and of Spanier gradually gaining Dawson’s trust. The climax pits the two against against each other when Dawson at last learns of Spanier’s precise job.
The movie was shot in Tokyo and looks large. Anyone who has spent time there will ogle a number of locations. (One erroneous tag is when Samuel Fuller cuts to a scene that was actually filmed in Kamakura at the Vast Buddha and at the Hachiman shrine.) Robert Ryan and, in a smaller role, Cameron Mitchell as Griff, his second in squawk, do trustworthy jobs, especially Ryan. Sandy Dawson is a risky man, superficially polite and solicitous, but not far below the surface is a expansive ego, a saunter of cruelty and what could be a hint of homoerotic feelings for Spanier. This isn’t stressed, but it explains Dawson’s actions concerning Spanier, and his intensity when he finds he has been betrayed. Dawson is also impartial a bit off. His last dialogue with a still Griff is not that of a man who is in total snort of his marbles. Ryan dominates the movie. Unfortunately, the movie is about the efforts to gather Ryan’s character, and these efforts center on Robert Stack’s character. Stack honest isn’t a profitable enough actor. Sam Fuller evidently wanted Stack to play Eddie Spanier like a staunch tough guy, but Stack can’t carry it off. He “acts” like a tough guy would lope and recede. He “acts” the map a tough guy would vow and sound. It’s phony from the first sentence out of Stack’s mouth, and it undercuts the effectiveness of the sage.
Buy,Download, Or Stream House of Bamboo! Click Here
The romance scenes between Stack and Shirley Yamaguchi seem stilted and almost unnecessary, but Fuller pumps up the tension on the action sequences. The screech robbery, the robbery at the cement factory and the dwelling up for the robbery of the bank bus are well handled. And the showdown between Dawson and Spanier, with the Tokyo police, at a children’s fun park high on top of a business building is expansive. On balance, however, House of Bamboo’s strong points seem to me to be a nice performance by Robert Ryan and some sizable scenery. The DVD represent is first rate.
This 1955 Sam Fuller film noir is basically saved, character-wise, by Robert Ryan who plays a vicious crime boss in, of all places, post-WW II Japan. The first American film shot there after the war, this is novel for that aspect. Ryan is vast, as usual; I can’t consider of one film he’s in that he doesn’t effect better than it is thanks to his presence. He runs a bunch of pachinko (read: pinball) parlors, a front for his crime operations which include robbing American supply trains of all kinds of stuff (the opening scene shows this really well) .
Robert Stack plays an undercover cop who infiltrates Ryan’s gang to rep out exactly how the man murdered at the beginning of the film during the heist bought it. Thanks to not only quick-witted settings, but Ryan’s tremendous performance, this is better than it should be. The script is kind of ho-hum. Stack is OK, glowing favorable, not great; he’s Robert Stack. He falls for the widow of the murdered guy; she’s Japanese so Fuller brings in another (semi-) controversial element, interracial worship (which he also did in Crimson Kimono) .
Fuller’s an recent, no inquire. Whether that originality is always of high quality is questionable, but he does cherish to hit the viewer in the face with issues curious social convention and in that respect, he’s definitely worth watching. When he’s great–as in Pickup on South Street, or Shock Corridor–where everything fits together and purrs like a Ford Cobra engine–he’s unbeatable. Here, in House of Bamboo, he gets some of the issues in, but the legend is nowhere reach as strong as it could or should be.
Worth seeing. Owning? I dunno.
Granby Colorado bulldozer
Handicap Shower Chairs