is a 1960

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

ese film directed by

Seijun Suzuki , born (24 May 1923 – 13 February 2017), was a Japanese filmmaker, actor, and screenwriter. His films are known for their jarring visual style, irreverent humour, nihilistic cool and entertainment-over-logic sensibility. He made 40 predo ...

and starring Michitaro Mizushima.

Production

The

Nikkatsu is a Japanese entertainment company known for its film and television productions. It is Japan's oldest major movie studio, founded in 1912 during the silent film era. The name ''Nikkatsu'' amalgamates the words Nippon Katsudō Shashin, literally ...

Company conceived ''Take Aim at the Police Van'' as a borderless action film, a studio subgenre with internationalized characters and setting. Contract director

had previously worked mainly on pop song films, a youth subgenre in which the films were built around an already popular song, and

yakuza film is a popular film genre in Japanese cinema which focuses on the lives and dealings of ''yakuza'', Japanese organized crime syndicates. In the silent film era, depictions of ''bakuto'' (precursors to modern yakuza) as sympathetic Robin Hood-li ...

s with an occasional

film noir Film noir (; ) is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American ' ...

bent. It also marked the beginning of his practice of co-writing his films. Leading man Michitaro Mizushima had also starred in Suzuki's ''

Underworld Beauty is a 1958 Japanese film directed by Seijun Suzuki. It marked Suzuki's first CinemaScope film and was also the first to be credited to his assumed name Seijun Suzuki. References External links * * * Underworld Beauty' at the Japanese Movie ...

'' two years earlier. He was atypical of borderless action films by virtue of his age, forty-eight at the time, as they typically featured Nikkatsu's younger stars such as Yujiro Ishihara and

Akira Kobayashi is a Japanese actor and singer. His nickname is . Biography Kobayashi attended Meiji University but left before graduating. He became an actor at Nikkatsu and made his film debut with "Ueru Tamashii" directed by Yuzo Kawashima in 1956. He so ...

Release

''Take Aim at the Police Van'' was released in Japan by the

Company on January 27, 1960. It was subsequently released in a five-film DVD box set, titled ''Nikkatsu Noir'', in North America on August 25, 2009, under

The Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...

Eclipse An eclipse is an astronomical event that occurs when an astronomical object or spacecraft is temporarily obscured, by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer. This alignment of three ce ...

label. The set focuses on noir-themed Nikkatsu Action films and also includes '' I Am Waiting'' (1957), ''

Rusty Knife is a 1958 action Japanese film directed by Toshio Masuda. ''Rusty Knife'' was part of the Nikkatsu film studio's wave of Japanese ''noir'' films, made in order to compete with popular American and French films at the Japanese box office. The fil ...

'' (1958), ''

Cruel Gun Story is a 1964 Japanese action film directed by Takumi Furukawa. This film was made available in North America when Janus Films released a special set of Nikkatsu studio's Noir films as part of The Criterion Collection, also including '' I Am Wa ...

'' (1964) and ''

A Colt Is My Passport is a 1967 Japanese yakuza film directed by Takashi Nomura for the Nikkatsu Corporation. It is based on the novel '' Tobosha'' by Shinji Fujihara. It stars Joe Shishido as a hitman and Jerry Fujio as his partner; reprising his usual roles of c ...

'' (1967) with liner notes by film historian Chuck Stephens.

The A.V. Club ''The A.V. Club'' is an American online newspaper and entertainment website featuring reviews, interviews, and other articles that examine films, music, television, books, games, and other elements of pop-culture media. ''The A.V. Club'' was cre ...

's Noel Murray felt the film holds up against contemporary Hollywood

s. Rating it less abstract than

's films of a few years later, he highlighted its vim and social candor and named it " testamentto how artists pumping out quickie exploitation product can often work in truths about their times that prestige filmmakers can't."

References

External links

Original trailer
at

* *
Take Aim at the Police Van
' at the ''

Kinema Junpo , commonly called , is Japan's oldest film magazine and began publication in July 1919. It was first published three times a month, using the Japanese ''Jun'' (旬) system of dividing months into three parts, but the postwar ''Kinema Junpō'' ha ...

'' Movie Database 1960 films 1960s Japanese-language films Films directed by Seijun Suzuki Nikkatsu films Films with screenplays by Shinichi Sekizawa 1960s Japanese films {{1960s-Japan-film-stub