Smashing the 0-Line Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		4.0
Overall		3.5

Smashing the 0-Line Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 30, 2018

Note: This film is available as part of Seijun Suzuki: The Early Years, Vol. 2 - Border Crossings: The Crime and Action Movies .

Arrow is continuing to give Japanese cinema fans a field day with new sets devoted to the genre offerings of Seijun Suzuki. Almost a year ago now, Arrow released Seijun Suzuki's The Taisho Trilogy, a trio of frankly often near hallucinatory efforts that initially had their theatrical exhibitions in the 1980s and 1990s. Arrow has now reached further back into what might be thought of as the formative years of Suzuki, offering both Seijun Suzuki: The Early Years, Vol. 1 - Seijun Rising: The Youth Movies (which Arrow has unfortunately been unable to provide a screener for as of the writing of this review) and Seijun Suzuki: The Early Years, Vol. 2 - Border Crossings: The Crime and Action Movies. This second volume obviously includes the sobriquet “Crime and Action Movies”, and as fans of Suzuki will know, at least some of his now considerable reputation was built upon yakuza outings, but as the rest of that subtitle announces, probably all five films in this set could be seen as crossing borders, i.e., incorporating the kind of crazy quilt combo platter of idioms and approaches that became a Nikkatsu hallmark, namely the so-called “borderless action” film.

As Tony Rayns gets into in the appealing overview of all five films in this set included on this release as a supplement, The Sleeping Beast Within and Smashing the 0-Line have a number of connections, including the fact that Suzuki made them one right after the other, both star Hiroyuki Nagato as a crusading journalist, and both deal with the perhaps fanciful (according to Rayns, anyway) conceit that Japan is awash in a secret drug trade. However, Smashing the 0- Line is arguably more of a character study than The Sleeping Beast Within, with Nagato’s character of Katori hardly qualifying as the kind of upright, moral force that his journalist in The Sleeping Beast Within was.

Shorn of some of the more out there elements that make The Man With a Shotgun such odd fun, Smashing the 0-Line is arguably the strongest “straight” drama in this second Suzuki set, one which may contain echoes of famous films like Ace in the Hole which almost delighted in showing the smarmy underbelly of journalism. Almost right off the bat, hard charging newspaper writer Katori (Nagato Hiroyuki) is shown to be a guy whose moral compass responds to the “true north” of getting a story, as evidenced by the fact he beds a girl and then turns her in for being part of a smuggling ring, getting a front page scoop in the process. Katori’s take no prisoner approach is contrasted with that of his childhood friend Nishina (Kodaka Yuji), whose character serves almost as a Greek Chorus of sorts, continually questioning and commenting on Katori’s sometimes less than honorable approaches to landing a scoop.

If The Sleeping Beast Within is at least partly about a journalist wondering if his pursuit of truth may end up damaging others, Smashing the 0-Line is just as much about the viewer coming to wonder whether a journalist’s pursuit of truth is damaging to the journalist. While the center of this film is the dialectic between Katori and Nishina, there’s another kind of awkwardly woven love angle, as well as the aforementioned drug element, though here it’s somewhat more overt than in The Sleeping Beast Within. The film’s almost breakneck pace means some fineries of plot elucidation are left for the viewer to figure out. Therefore, you have to kind of read between the lines to divine the long history uniting Katori and Nishina, as well as their joint connection to a suspect whose rather odd suicide (does biting off your tongue kill you?) early in the film leads to a series of developments.

Smashing the 0-Line Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Smashing the 0-Line is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Video with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. Arrow's insert booklet only contains the following pretty generic verbiage about all five films in this set:

The films in this collection were remastered in high definition by Nikkatsu and delivered to Arrow Films. Additional restoration and grading work was completed at R3store Studios in London. Each film is presented in its original aspect ratio with its original mono audio.

There's no comparison to the image quality between the two black and white 'Scope outings in this set, with Smashing the 0-Line easily topping The Sleeping Beast Within in all categories, and in fact being arguably the best overall looking presentation in this set, including the two color films. Once again as with the other films, the Nikkatsu masthead is pretty badly damaged (almost comically so), but once the film begins, things look much better. There's quite a bit of rear projection in this film, some of which can look a little ragged, but the "new" material offers typically excellent blacks and gray scale, as well as pleasing sharpness and clarity. As with The Man With a Shotgun, there's a flitting anomaly where some kind of anamorphic shift takes place, leading to a slightly warped look on occasion. While grain resolves naturally throughout, it can tend to look a little heavy in some of the outdoor material.

Smashing the 0-Line Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Smashing the 0-Line features an LPCM Mono track in the original Japanese. Things are by and large fine here, though there is some passing distortion that shows up on occasion (listen to the closing seconds of the film for one example), along with just a few scuffs and pops that are pretty minimal. The film features a pretty blistering, jazz inflected score which can sound pretty bright but which doesn't suffer from any major distortion. Dialogue is presented cleanly and clearly throughout.

Smashing the 0-Line Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Disc One of this set contains The Sleeping Beast Within and Smashing the 0-Line along with the following supplements:

• Jasper Sharp Commentary - Smashing the 0-Line


• Tony Rayns on the Crime and Action Movies (1080p; 49:23) is another great piece featuring the knowledeable Rayns, who discusses each of the five films in this set in some detail.


• Trailers

  The Sleeping Beast Within (1960) Trailer (1080p; 3:25)

  Smashing the 0-Line (1960) Trailer (1080p; 2:54)

• Still Galleries

  The Sleeping Beast Within (1960) Gallery (1080p; 3:30)

  Smashing the 0-Line (1960) Gallery (1080p; 4:20)

Note: The supplement score above is for the set as a whole.

Smashing the 0-Line Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Smashing the 0-Line is brisk, occasionally violent, fare that presents a rather interesting dialectic between two newsmen with resolutely different methods for getting the story. Frankly, both the love and the underworld drug elements to this tale aren't that fascinating and probably could have been jettisoned without much problem, since the interaction between Katori and Nishina is so interesting and well done. Arrow has provided a release with solid technical merits, and Smashing the 0-Line comes Recommended.