Golgo 13 Assignment Kowloon ゴルゴ13 九竜の首

1977 · KonCATIII

Golgo 13: Kowloon Assignment (1977) Hola, a big-budge kung fu/action movie today, something quite a bit different than the usual slapdash chopsocky fare I usually review in this genre. Not as much silliness to poke fun at, therefore, but still worth the effort to detail for no other reason that it's quite a rare movie in English markets. Here we go. Our hero (anti-hero, really) is "Golgo 13", an iconic hitman character from a variety of Japanese comics, movies, and animae. He's a mysterious hired assassin, the best of the best, and a tortured soul every bit as complicated as James Bond or Jason Bourne. The Golgo 13 nickname comes from the 13th man at Golgotha selling out Jesus (look it up). He's played perfectly by 38-year old Sonny Chiba, one of those legendary martial arts movie stars that all kung fu fans know quite well (I've reviewed him before in Sister Street Fighter and Shogun's Ninja ). Golgo 13's appearance is set in established canon through a decade of comic books--dark skin, short hair, long sideburns, cold steely eyes, and a penchant for well-cut suits and Western leather shoes. He's not a big man (Chiba himself was only 5'9" and maybe 160 pounds), but he exudes a dangerous vibe of hair-trigger violence and simmering sexuality that makes for a very compelling character. Women want him and men want to be him, you know the drill. Golgo 13. Our movie opens on a yacht off the coast of Miami, Florida, where Golgo 13 is hired by a drug boss to kill one of their own who is skimming off the top. $150,000 up front is offered to do the hit, and Golgo 13 offers guaranteed results in return. The target is "the Kingpin", who operates in Hong Kong, and as he's already dodged three hitmen, they called the best. "And after you've killed the Kingpin, we have another target for you. Here is his picture..." To show off his skills, Golgo 13 turns and shoots two thugs off a balcony from 800 yards away (from a rocking boat on the open sea, mind you). His signature weapon (here and in the comics) is a stock Armalite M16A2 with a simple 10power scope and a flash suppressor. Not the best choice for a sniper's rifle by any means, as the M16A2 was never intended to be a marksman's rifle, but it's suitably badass. He'd be better off with a dedicated sniper's rifle, however, like a Remington 700 or even a Winchester Model 70, or, since he is such an iconic cultural figure in Japan, you'd think he'd use something locally made (like the 7.62mm Howa Type 64, for example). Oh, God, do I sound like a gun-nut? Crap. Bang! Anyway, we now leave our killer-for-hire for a while to go off to Hong Kong where the majority of the movie will be set. Here we meet Smithy, a detective with the Hong Kong police force. Smithy is working hard on taking down the Kingpin himself, and in a few set-up scenes we see him chipping away at the edges of the Kingpin's empire, roughing up small-time dealers and raiding dive bars. As is (sadly) typical of Asian cops-and-robbers movies, the HK police don't seem to have to follow any sort of rules or laws, they have a free hand to beat up witnesses and shoot suspects on the street without any fear of legal trouble. Not sure what this says about law enforcement in Asia, but it can't be good. Smithy (ethnically Chinese, despite the Western name). A note on our timeframe. In 1977, Hong Kong was still a British Crown Colony, though they've always had very close relations with the Chinese government. As such, Hong Kong is filled with English-speaking locals eating fish-and-chips and cars driving on the wrong damn side of the road. As for the police, all the plainclothes cops are ethnic Chinese (for whatever reason the only Europeans we see on the police force are supervisors), and all the Constables of the Royal Hong Kong Police (Queen Elizabeth's finest, dontchaknow) wear spiffy khaki shorts, knee-high socks, and pistols on lanyards (time-warped in from 1937). And they all have such awesome hair. As a cover for his drug-running, the Kingpin operates a legit nightclub downtown. We go there now and the camera follows some customers around, stopping to linger on the half-nekkid dancers and the bottles of English scotch. The talent show for the night is a woman throwing knives at a human target, a favorite sideshow at carnivals across the world. As it turns out, the knife-thrower is an undercover cop named Lam, played with great gusto by a still-young Etsuko Shihomi (from Sister Street Fighter and Ninja Wars ). Shihomi and Chiba go way back and have appeared in a number of movies together over the years and share a similar kung fu style (she's an unabashed Chiba protege). Topless girls!?! Call Kelby! Lam. Lam plants a bug and overhears the Kingpin talking about his drug shipments (her spygadget is hidden in her makeup compact). She follows the Kingpin in her car out to an old rubber factory in the sticks where the Kingpin has a cocaine lab set up. Using the cover of darkness and the sneakiness of her sneakers, she