In Masato Harada’s crime thriller, revenge is less a dish served cold, and more a never ending buffet of pain.
“I think I’m a mad dog. I only know how to bite.”
There’s something reassuringly reliable about Yakuza stories. From early films like Branded to kill to the over-the-top v-cinema schlock Takashi Miike used to make, we’re unlikely to see any massive deviations from the norms; that is to say brotherhood, betrayal, vice, gunplay, and the most reliable trope of them all: dozens of characters and relationships thrown at us immediately. In these regards, Hell Dogs, adapted from the novel by Akio Fukamachi, ticks all the boxes. But it’s in how it showcases these tropes, now in the 2020s that will define whether it will hold up or not.
Goro Idejuki (Junichi Okada) is a former cop who went AWOL some time back to get revenge on a group of criminals who shot and killed four shop workers, including a woman he was really into. He’s dragged back to the force by Captain Anai (Yoshi Sakou), who heads the Metropolitan Criminal Police, and wants Goro to take out the Toshokai family from the inside. Goro is told to take an assumed name and befriends Muro (Kentaro Sakaguchi) a member of the Hell Dogs – a special team consisting of killers from several families within the Toshikai. From there, Goro and Muro are told to get closer to the latest family chairman Toake (Miyavi), where Goro can exact his revenge.
In terms of both content and visual style, Hell Dogs has that classic Yakuza fare. It has the big, showy soap opera drama of classics old and new like Battles without Honour or Humanity and the Like a Dragon games. I can’t say I’m thrilled by the motivation for the revenge: a loved one killed in a random criminal act, especially a woman, is beyond tired by now but it thankfully doesn’t belabour this and only returns to that backstory on occasion.
With this much story to adapt, it’s only fair that it has to whiz past its early expository dialogue quickly, and within the first ten minutes we’re introduced to our main character, the entire Metropolitan Special Crimes Unit, three Toshokai family chairmen, the members of the special Hell Dogs unit and half a dozen other high ranking Yakuza. The information comes pretty quickly and anyone whose attention wavers for even a second is at risk of losing track of who’s who, and how they’re related to everyone.
Despite having so many moving parts, I appreciated the addition of the Veda cult support group that Muro joins after reconnecting with his childhood friend Anna (Mai Kiryu). Not only does it let the Yakuza side of things breathe a bit, the group’s stories of Goro as a hero cop promise to only complicate Muro’s relationship to his blood brother. It’s a huge boon to the story as the dynamic between the two leads is a big part of what makes Hell Dogs so engaging.
Hell Dogs is a frenetic but ultimately highly entertaining piece of yakuza fiction that trades endless shoot-outs for a complex game of cat and mouse between an uncountable number of characters. It never quite reaches the lofty heights touched by Kitano and Fukusaku, but director Harada puts in his all and manages to showcase enough of that much needed brotherhood, betrayal, vice and gunplay, interspersed with some excellent drama, that make the genre what it is.
Verdict: Sometimes muddled and occasionally too frantic for its own good, Hell Dogs is nonetheless a great modern Yakuza thriller loaded with endearing characters and performances.
Overall entertainment: 7/10
Violence: 6/10
Sex: 3/10
Soothing song of choice: 12 Days of Christmas, naturally
Healing tent: That’s a thing apparently.
Character designs: I loved Kumazawa’s pompadour and Chuji’s nose mask
Hell Dogs (2022)
Also known as: ヘルドッグス
Japanese
Director: Masato Harada
Writers: Akio Fukamachi (novel), Masato Harada
CAST
Junichi Okada – Goro Idejuki
Kentaro Sakaguchi – Hideki Murooka
Mayu Matsuoka – Emiri Kisa
Miyavi – Yoshitaka Toake
Kazuki Kitamura – Tsutomu Toki
Shinobu Otake – Noriko Kinugasa
Satoshi Kanada – Kuniyua Mikami
Mai Kiryu – Anna Zeze
Arisa Nakajima – Ruka
Kyoko – Mama
Yasumasa Ohba – Chuji Omaeda
Mio Tanaka – Tawaraya
Yoshi Sakou – Captain Anai
Mariko Akama – Kumazawa
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