Ryuji (1983)

Genres - Crime  |   Sub-Genres - Crime Drama  |   Countries - United States  |   MPAA Rating - NR
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Synopsis by Jonathan Crow

Masaji Kaneko writes and stars in this cult film about a yakuza trying to go straight. The film opens with Ryuji (Kaneko) as a swaggering lieutenant in a Shinjuku gang, who is making a killing by shaking down big-spending gamblers at an illegal roulette operation. He's helped by a pair of unlikely underlings: Hiroshi (Koji Kita), a coward with a passion for bargain shopping, and Nao (Kinzo Sakura), a dim bulb who tries to shake down a fellow gangster and then flubs his pinky extraction atonement. Yet Ryuji's troubles go far deeper than inept help. Three years previously, after he was thrown in jail, his wife Mariko (Eiko Nagashima) left him at her parents' behest. Once out of the clink, he is appalled at his subordinates' lack of business acumen and infuriated at his wife's betrayal. Though he is raking in the cash and carousing with whores, he feels that his life is empty. Eventually, he decides to go straight. He reconciles with Mariko, gets a job driving a truck, and tends after his baby daughter in the evening. Of course, this moment of contentment does not last as his dark past soon comes knocking. Masaji Kaneko, who struggled for years to get his film made and distributed, died of cancer at the age of 33, a week after it opened.

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