Line #14 Film/TokyoDrifter


1	[[quoteright:180:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/331cec980cb8fcd26aa71980e5b2036f.jpg]]
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3	Tetsuya "Phoenix Tetsu" Hondo is a young ex-Yakuza. He's an ex-Yakuza because his old boss, Kurata, went straight, dissolving the gang and buying a nightclub. Tetsu is wandering around Japan pursued by members of the rival Otsuka gang who, having failed to recruit Tetsu after Kurata retired, are not willing to let him run around loose on his own. But until they catch him he's the Tokyo Drifter, traveling Japan leaving a trail of bodies and betrayal in his wake.
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5	One of the last {{Yakuza}} films maverick Japanese film director Creator/SeijunSuzuki made for Nikkatsu, ''Tokyo Drifter'' exhibits all of the features of Suzuki's iconoclastic style, which gleefully skewered classic yakuza genre tropes with dark humor, pop-art visuals and rule-of-cool sensibilities. Nikkatsu studios drastically reduced Tokyo Drifter's budget in a vain attempt to rein Suzuki in but this only caused him get even more creative. Suzuki responded by stripping the story down to its bare essentials, eliminating connecting shots through clever camera work, and building the film around a series of long establishing shots of star Tetsuya Watari in a rather distinctive and modish light blue suit wandering around in the snow. Though not a big success when originally released (lending credence to Nikkatsu's charge that Suzuki's films "make no money and make no sense") it has since become a CultClassic and Suzuki's absurdist and bare-bones style would become influential among a younger generation of directors, most notably Creator/QuentinTarantino.
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7	Has nothing to do with ''Film/TheFastAndTheFuriousTokyoDrift''.
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10	!!''Tokyo Drifter'' contains examples of the following tropes:
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12	* AntagonistInMourning: Tetsu, Shooting Star, and Umetani are depressed after Tatsuzo kills himself at the end of their fight.
13	--> '''Umetani''': Even the death of a killer gets me down.
14	* BarBrawl: Otsuka's men track Tetsu to a bar in Sasebo, starting an epic brawl when they attack. Just to drive home the joke, the bar in question is an American Wild West theme bar, complete with bat-wing doors.
15	* BetterToDieThanBeKilled: The bar brawl ends with Tatsuzo shooting himself in the head after Shooting Star gets the drop on him.
16	* BittersweetEnding: Tetsu returns to Tokyo to take revenge on Kurata for betraying him. He rescues Chiharu and kills Otsuka and his men. Kurata, feeling guilty for betraying Tetsu, commits suicide by slitting his wrist with a shard of glass. Tetsu then leaves Chiharu, telling her that he's fully embraced his drifter status and can't have someone by his side. He sadly walks away into the night as a free man.
17	* TheCavalry: Just when it looks like Tetsu has finally been chased down by Otsuka's goons in a provincial town, he is rescued by "Shooting Star", a former Otsuka Mook who has gone rogue.
18	* CelibateHero: Early in the film Tetsu rejects a thinly-veiled offer from Chiharu to come up to her place for sex. And at the end he declines to let her come with him on his life as a drifter, saying he's gotten used to being alone.
19	--> '''Tetsu''': I can't walk with a woman at my side.
20	* TheChanteuse: Sexy Chiharu is the singer at Kurata's nightclub. Otsuka wants her for himself.
21	* ColorMotif: Red, the color of violence, is associated with Otsuka. He wears a red suit and there's usually some red item prominently shown in every scene where he appears.
22	* DeliberatelyMonochrome: The opening scene, in which Tetsu refuses an invitation to join Otsuka's gang and then gets beat up, is shot in stark black and white. The rest of the film is in color.
23	* TheDrifter: He's from Tokyo, no less.
24	* HerosJourney: Tetsu will eventually go home to settle accounts.
25	* HighPressureBlood: Note the impressive fountain of blood at the end when Kurata slices his wrist with a shard of glass.
26	* HonorBeforeReason: A common {{Yakuza}} film trope that Suzuki loved deconstructing. Tetsuya is fiercely loyal to Kurata, believing "we're like father and son", but Kurata, the chief of Tetsuya's old gang, sells him out without hesitation as soon as it's convenient. The characters talk big about honor but rarely miss a chance to be mean, petty, sneaky, or selfish. They aren't particularly big on reasoning, either.
27	--> '''Otsuka''': Money and power rule now! Honor means nothing!
28	* InTheBack: Otsuka's evilness is underlined by how he pretends to buy the nightclub's mortgage from Yoshii, then shoots him InTheBack as Yoshii is leaving the office.
29	* IronicJuxtaposition: A shot shows a dog lying down on the docks of Tokyo harbor, then getting up and trotting away; this is immediately followed by a shot of Tetsu woozily rising to his feet after getting beat up by Otsuka's goons.
30	* MeaningfulAppearance: In the final scene Tetsu wears an off-white suit, a white shirt, and a white tie, symbolizing his purity and honor, while all the other men wear black suits, symbolizing their corruption. Of course, since the message of the film is that it's bad to put HonorBeforeReason, this is not necessarily a good thing.
31	* NeverBringAKnifeToAGunfight: Two rival gangs in a provincial town are fighting with swords, and it all looks totally badass--until Tatsuzo the Otsuka man strides forward with a pistol and starts plugging dudes. The battle ends shortly thereafter.
32	--> '''Tatsuzo''': Stupid peasants!
33	* NotWithTheSafetyOnYouWont: "Shooting Star" notes that the mook who is pointing a gun at him forgot to take the safety off, then snatches the gun out of his hands.
34	* RaceFetish: Subtext in the scene where a white woman is performing as a stripper in a bar. And then direct text when, in the middle of the chaotic brawl, the stripper comes on to Tetsu.
35	--> '''Stripper''': ''(in Japanese)'' Much better than the French, English, and American guys I see. ''(kisses Tetsu)''
36	* RuleOfCool: Pretty much Suzuki's stock in trade.
37	* SexySecretary: Yoshii's secretary Mutsuko, who is shown in one scene artfully applying lipstick. She's also the girlfriend of one of Otsuka's men, and she betrays her boss to Otsuka.
38	* SplashOfColor: The opening scene where Otsuka's goons beat up Tetsu in black and white, except for a very brief ImagineSpot in which Otsuka is imagining Tetsu as a badass in his gang. That's in color.
39	* TitleDrop: Chiharu sings a song about a "Tokyo drifter."
40	* TravelMontage: A series of static shots of various cities with wipes as transitions, and a screen chyron that says "drifting...drifting", illustrate Tetsu's wandering before he winds up in Sasebo at a [[TheWildWest Wild West]]-themed bar.
41	* WalkingTheEarth: Tetsu chooses this fate at the end, continuing the life of a drifter even when he doesn't have to.
42	* {{Yakuza}}: Both the characters and the genre.

Context Film / TokyoDrifter