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Britain's Optimum Releasing have
recently started giving some of Sonny Chiba's films uncut releases in
their original Japanese language and in their original aspect ratio –
something that fans can be very thankful for. 1977's Golgo 13:
Assignment Kowloon (also known as Golgo 13: Kowloon
Assignment!) is available separately or as part of The Sonny
Chiba Collection Volume Two where it's teamed up with G.I.
Samurai and The Bullet Train.
Based on the long running Japanese
manga (comics) series, Sonny Chiba (The Street Fighter, The
Executioner) plays Golgo 13, a ruthless killer-for-hire, in
this sequel to Toei’s original 1973 picture (simply titled Golgo
13 and starring Ken Takakura in the lead role). When Golgo 13 is
hired to travel from Japan to Hong Kong to assassinate a drug lord, he’s
beaten to it by a mysterious rival assassin, but is assumed guilty by a
hardboiled Hong Kong cop referred to only as Detective Smith (played by
Callan Leung) who’s out to put Golgo behind bars for good.
Along the way, Golgo saves a young woman (Etsuko Shiomi of Sister Street Fighter and The
Dragon Princess) who kills her partner in an argument in an
alleyway for no apparent reason. Keeping her out of harms way and away
from the police, he later uses her for the same purpose when he’s shot
in the leg while escaping from the police himself.
As it happens, a diplomat named Mr. Polanski (Jerry Ito of Mothra and
Message From Space) turns out to be behind it all and the film comes to a
great climax with Golgo, dangling from a cliff, attempting to get his
revenge on Polanski, who’s flying in a helicopter, all the while with
the cops trying to keep anyone else from getting killed.
Though not the greatest Chiba film ever made, his screen presence is
remarkable as the tough as nails gun for hire Golgo, though the film
suffers from too many extended periods in which we don’t see or here
from Golgo and it doesn’t move at a lightning fast pace either. Shiomi
and Chiba, as always, are great together here and have always seemed to
have a nice chemistry on screen (likely due to the fact that she’s one
of his protégés from the ‘Japan Action Club’, a training school for
martial arts film stars that Chiba ran in the 1970s).
There are, however, some truly memorable moments in the movie, and the
scenes where Golgo 13 is at work are great, with Chiba decked out in a
slick 70s style business suit, smoking a cigar, and showing us what being
a tough guy is really all about.
On an interesting side note, there is a scene in Golgo 13 – Assignment: Kowloon
that was lifted almost shot-for-shot by John Woo’s The Killer, where the
assassin plans his shot to the hit at the same time a starter pistol is
fired at a race near a swimming pool, so obviously the film has had more
influence than a lot of people have given it credit for.
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