New Battles Without Honor and Humanity Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

New Battles Without Honor and Humanity Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 28, 2017

Note: This film is available as part of New Battles Without Honor and Humanity: The Complete Trilogy.

When is a franchise not a franchise? In the case of Kinji Fukusaku’s Battles Without Honor and Humanity: The Complete Collection, it’s when studio bigwigs aren’t content to leave well enough alone and keep commissioning sequels even after the story has supposedly been told. As Fukusaku biographer Sadao Yamane details in one of the supplements included in this new three disc set, while the New Battles Without Honor and Humanity: The Complete Trilogy can themselves be seen as unconnected “sequels” that are in fact sequels in name only, that particular tendency arguably started earlier with the original Battles Without Honor and Humanity, which Yamane suggests really “ended” sooner than the initial quintet’s supposed organic wholeness might indicate. As I mentioned in our Battles Without Honor and Humanity Blu-ray review, Fukusaku’s name might not be that familiar to those outside of the Asian film fan community, even though he helmed the Japanese portions of the gigantic 1970 international co- production Tora! Tora! Tora!. In Japan, though, his contributions to the yakuza genre with the original Battles Without Honor and Humanity were perhaps unexpectedly huge hits in their day in their native country, something that of course sparked the interest in sequels to begin with. The original quintet brought a new quasi-historical aspect to Japanese crime sagas, something that Fukusaku attempts to continue in a similar approach with the secondary trilogy, though it’s at least questionable as to whether the New Battles Without Honor and Humanity really maintain the same level of visceral impact that the original pentalogy did. It’s also worth noting that Fukusaku, working with some new writers unaffiliated with the original five films, discards any real linking devices to those first five films, other than the fact that (probably for marketing purposes as much as anything else) he utilizes many of the same actors from the original series (in new, unrelated, roles).

Along with Kinji Fukusaku, the biggest connection to the first five Battles Without Humanity or Honor films is arguably the participation of Bunta Sugawara, though his characters in the three “new, improved” films ostensibly have little to nothing to do with his portrayal of Shozo Hirono, at least in name. That said, there's a certain undeniable similarity in general temperament and a "cooler than cool" style. It’s kind of interesting to note that the first of the three New Battles Without Humanity or Honor appeared only around six months after the original quintet’s Final Episode, perhaps one indication of how energized (desperate?) Toie was to keep the franchise alive.

There are a number of other, perhaps slightly more subliminal, links to the first five Battles Without Honor and Humanity films, including rampant internecine (and intramural) warfare between various factions in yakuza families. There’s perhaps a bit less of the “ripped from the headlines” approach in this first film of the new trilogy, with less of a reliance on endless introductions to characters (though there are still quite a few to keep track of), and less of the interstitial elements featuring black and white photos and back stories (those elements do show up occasionally here as well as in the two other films). But with two of the three films (including this one) involving a major character first doing time in stir and then trying to forge some kind of life afterward, and with the third offering a pretty traditional take on the yakuza culture surrounding elevation to crime boss status, there's a kind of unmistakable "been there, seen that" feeling to both this film and its two siblings.

In this first installment of the new trilogy, Sugawara portrays Miyoshi Makio, a loyal underling in the yakuza run by Yoshio Yamamori (Nobuo Kaneki). In another plot element that is somewhat reminiscent of aspects in the first five film, Makio ends up being sent to prison at the same time that another Yamamori crime family member, Aoki Naotake (Tomisaburō Wakayama), attempts to make a power grab. For reasons that are really never fully made clear, Miyoshi becomes the primary focus of efforts by both Yamamori and Aoki to win him to their side, hopefully helping them either maintain (in the case of Yamamori) or usurp (in the case of Aoki) power. There are therefore several layers of conflict in the film, with the intramural skirmishes between Aoki and Yamamori provided surface level thrills, while a more interior conflict concerning Miyoshi and his reaction to being in the middle of everything is also explored, if cursorily.

Fukusaku biographer Sadao Yamane makes a case for the New Battles trilogy offering at least a bit more of a female perspective on events, and while not at any exaggerated level, there's some interesting material dealing with a woman for whom Miyoshi falls, a subplot that also deals at least tangentially with some of the subliminal tensions between the Japanese and Koreans. The second two films in this trilogy will offer even more substantial roles for women and do in fact start to give a kind of refreshing take on events from a woman's point of view.

The film offers Sugawara a chance to provide yet another one of his steely eyed, cigaratte consuming characters, and he acquits himself as forcefully as ever in the role. Fukasaku of course also provides the requisite action sequences, which is when New Battles Without Honor and Humanity best imitates the franchise films which came before it.

New Battles Without Honor and Humanity Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Note: All three films in this set exhibit some of the same issues and overall appearance, so I will make some general comments about the trilogy before moving on to this particular film.

New Battles Without Honor and Humanity, The Boss' Head and Last Days of the Boss are presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Video with AVC encoded 1080p transfers in a variety of aspect ratios (not the uniform 2.35:1 mentioned in the verbiage below). The booklet Arrow provides inside this set's slipcase has the following pretty generic information on the transfers:

The three films in the New Battles Without Honor and Humanity are presented in their original aspect ratios of 2.35:1 and with their original mono sound. All three films were remastered in high definition and supplied for this release by Toei Company, Ltd.

The fact that there's no real information on the source element utilized or any restoration efforts may be one clue as to the decent if never totally spectacular appearance of all three films in this set. All three look at least somewhat faded, with a sometimes brown or yellow quality and an occasionally somewhat subdued palette. There are also inconsistencies with brightness which, while nowhere close to the luma anomaly levels seen in The Twilight Samurai, do tend to cast a kind of hazy miasma over selected moments. Grain is generally very well resolved throughout the three films, though it does have occasional chunkiness in some of the darkest moments.

New Battles Without Honor and Humanity is presented in 2.45:1, a bit wider than the advertised 2.35:1. The Toei masthead looks pretty ragged, which may give some folks some initial pause, but while improvable, the image here is generally decently detailed, especially in brighter lighting conditions, and free of any signs of really noticeable age related wear and tear. While things do look slightly faded, the palette actually pops quite well in a number of nightclub scenes, where some evocative purples and oranges predominate, or several outdoor moments, even if the green of the foliage can look a little drab. There are passing moments that look too bright, typically dark interior scenes where there's a kind of yellowish hazy overlay. Crush is fairly prevalent in some of the darkest moments, and there are also temporary but noticeable spikes in the grain field in some of these same darker moments. Some of this variability may argue for the score to be pushed down more toward the 3.0 level, but on the whole this is an organic looking presentation that shows no signs of aggressive digital tweaking and which provides at least decent detail levels and palette reproduction.

New Battles Without Honor and Humanity Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with all of the films in this set, New Battles Without Honor and Humanity features an LPCM Mono track in the original Japanese. The track sports good fidelity, with only a slightly boxy sound from elements like narration or voiceover showing signs of age. The film's score is arguably a little more redolent of a spy saga than a yakuza film, but it's rendered cleanly and clearly, if narrowly, on this track. Dialogue comes through just fine, even in some cacophonous action sequences.

New Battles Without Honor and Humanity Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Beyond the Films: Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1080p; 9:25) is a good generalist overview of the trilogy by Fukusaku biographer Sadao Yamane. He gets into the history of the first pentalogy and how its incredible success led to Toie not wanting to let their golden goose escape.


• Original Teaser (1080p; 1:41)


• Original Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 3:24)

New Battles Without Honor and Humanity Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It's obvious that this "reboot" was rushed into production to take advantage of the box office windfall Toie understandably wanted to keep going, and so there's an unavoidably familiar feeling to much of the proceedings. Sugawara is still a wonderful focal presence, and as usual Fukasaku provides some riveting action sequences. Technical merits are decent if not spectacular for those considering a purchase.