New Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Last Days of the Boss Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

New Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Last Days of the Boss 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).

As with New Battles Without Honor and Humanity: The Boss' Head, it’s internecine warfare of a sort that propels this film’s plot into motion. Once again Bunta Sugawara is on hand, this time as Shiuchi Nozaki, a kind of day laborer who gets sucked into the yakuza lifestyle and who then rather unexpectedly is named as the successor to his crime family’s assassinated leader, a man who had taken Nozaki under his wing. Nozaki wants revenge on those who murdered his mentor, but a recent peace treaty (in a manner of speaking) forces Nozaki to try to plot his revenge secretly. Things are sent into a tailspin when Nozaki’s sister Asami (Chieko Matsubara) shows up out of the blue, and gossip begins to spread that there may be an incestuous relationship between the siblings. The fact that Asami and her thuggish husband are part of the gang suspected in the killing of Nozaki's mentor provides some built in tension and opportunities for suspicion and misunderstandings.

Despite that rumor mongering, in a way Asami turns out to be the conscience of the film, and it’s in this final installment that some will see the full flowering of the “female perspective” Fukasaku biographer Sadao Yamane states gives this trilogy an unusual take on the yakuza genre. Her status as both an outsider and perhaps unwilling insider provides the film with a sometimes pointed set of reactions to the endless violence the male characters seem unable or unwilling to stop. In fact, the film very ably documents the utter absurdity of Nozaki’s quest for “justice”, since all it does is create more conflict (there’s a kind of neat “twist” when Nozaki finally catches up with his intended target, in another moment where Fukasaku and screenwriter Kōji Takada seem to be trying to point out the lunacy of some elements of the yakuza lifestyle).

There’s a simultaneously unfolding plot arc dealing with another death that ultimately gets folded into the main story (in a none too surprising linkage), but the real power of this film comes from its generally energetic portrayal of a driven criminal on what he thinks is a quest for vengeance, but which turns out to provide a perhaps unexpected journey toward self realization. Sugawara is his typical commanding self in the film, though he demonstrates a kind of charming vulnerability at times, especially in a couple of scenes with Matsubara.

For my money, The Last Days of the Boss is the most satisfying of the three films in the New Battles Without Honor and Humanity series. The writing is sharper, and the interactions between Asami and several male characters are well handled, giving this film the kind of emotional resonance the other two in this set aim for but never quite achieve. Fukasaku offers his traditional assortment of manically staged action sequences, but for once it’s the human story that really takes precedence, with an almost Shakespearean feeling of fate and tragedy intertwining to send Nozaki into unexpected territories.

New Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Last Days of the Boss 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.

Last Days of the Boss is presented in 2.46:1, the widest of the ratios in this set and another variance from the advertised aspect ratio. I'm a little conflicted about how to score this release, since the outdoor material looks largely great, with good detail levels and an especially robust palette where bright blue skies and other primaries found on costumes (or, frankly, wounds) pop with good immediacy. That said, some of the interior and/or dimly lit material is hampered by some compression hurdles with grain resolution (two notable examples occur at circa 15:05 and 45:40), and with fairly significant crush and lack of fine detail. While a lot of the palette is skewed toward the same brown tones that can be seen in the two other films in this set, there's also a slight bluish tint to selected sequences in this transfer.

New Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Last Days of the Boss Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Perhaps unexpectedly, given that this is the newest of the three films in this set (if only by a few months), this disc's Japanese LPCM mono track has some of the boxiest sound of the trilogy. There's some noticeable if slight distortion in some of the score cues (perhaps exacerbated by this film's emphasis on brass cues), but even voiceover and dialogue sounds slightly processed and not especially natural. That said, no dialogue is really lost and it, along with effects, are rendered decently if not optimally.

New Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Last Days of the Boss Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Koji Takada: Closing Stories (1080p; 17:26) is a continuation of the interview begun as a supplement on New Battles Without Honor and Humanity: The Boss' Head, with Takada discussing how he sought to bring the franchise to its conclusion.


• Original Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 3:25)

New Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Last Days of the Boss Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

In a way it's ironic that the New Battles Without Honor and Humanity trilogy ended with this film, since in my not so humble opinion Last Days of the Boss finally manages to weave together Fukasaku's patented gonzo action sequences with a story that actually has some emotional resonance. Sugawara is once again a commanding presence on screen, but some may find it's Matsubara's performance that truly lingers after the film has ended. Video has both good and not so good moments, while audio is serviceable if pretty boxy sounding, for those considering a purchase.