Fighting Delinquents

aka くたばれ愚連隊 aka Kutabare Gurentai aka Go to Hell, Hoodlums!

1960
Screenplay by Iwao Yamazaki
Based on the novel by Kenzaburo Hara
Directed by Seijun Suzuki

Before Seijun Suzuki was making full-bore fever dreams, he was fully bored making B pictures, which lead to him beginning the creative flourishes that he became known for. While Fighting Delinquents is still early in his filmography, it is his first film in color and already shows hints of his use of color to set moods and scenes. Beyond his experiments, Fighting Delinquents isn’t really that special, outside of some goofy scenes and a conflict that spans generations, class, clans, modern Japan vs. old school Japan, and the meaning of family. That’s probably ascribing more than the story pulls off, but it is all there even if only parts of it are actually addressed.

The story is pretty straightforward, a lost heir is brought back into a clan on Awaji Island to help them stand against a crooked developer. He faces slack due to basically being raised as a street orphan in the city, the rougher personality clashing with the clan-based traditionalists he’s brought to, while his in grained sense of righteousness and justice puts him at odds with the developers. His mentor in the city who plucked him out of an orphanage to learn a trade (along with some other kids) is struck down in the opening scene by a drunken businessman, and we all know he’s going to end up being the businessman who is trying to take the clan’s land, so this isn’t even a spoiler. Sadao Matsudaira (Koji Wada) doesn’t take his crap then, when he tries to buy off the kids in mourning with a pittance offering. Nor does he take it lightly when he finds out who is responsible for his new family’s misery.


Sadao is so self-righteous and stubborn that his friends basically have to shove him out the door to go meet his family, he doesn’t want to abandon his old group for them. But after some growing pains, he quickly learns to adjust to his new living situation and sets plans in motion to disrupt the plots of the businessmen. They aren’t going to take this without a fight, and Sadao still has his old friends to call on. Japan is modernizing, and the older parts need to get with the program or they are going to be forced out.

There are scenes that seem like they are going to have some hand in the finale but just end up being flourishes, such as a photographer who becomes obsessed with a blonde nightclub performer and loses all his money, Sadao just ends up hiring him to help out, but there isn’t a big reveal with a photo or anything. Sadao’s old friends provide some morale support but also don’t really work into everything all shaking out. It’s all a bit confusing, and while more realistic, it makes the film seem cluttered and disjointed.

Suzuki loves him some musical numbers, and despite the villains being a bunch of real estate developers, they all hang out at a nightclub they own (called Nightclub Joker because that’s just a perfect name for such a location!), which allows a bunch of different acts to play that all work well with the scenes happening at the club. The photographer’s infatuation with the foreign nightclub performer who takes all his money and leaves him with nothing parallels the developers from mainland Japan who want to take all the land from the Matsudaira clan and leave them with nothing. Sadao confronts his mother and her loyalty to her developer boyfriend after being abandoned by the Matsudaira clan and giving up her son while a bellydancing act plays on in the background. There’s even an awesome song where a lady sings about being the Little Transistor Chick, the song and the lady both causing me to want this film to pause and start a whole new film about her and her Little Transistor Chick lifestyle. The nightclub goons chase after Sadao who hides in a traditional puppet play production complete with traditional song playing. The old school protecting him from the modern developers, showing that even with his newer styles, he has become accepted while their presence is still seen as too different.

The most Suzuki scene is where Sadao’s mother speaks with the Matsudaira clan member who is attempting to sell them out, the shot being artificially colored as emphasis as they both discuss their plans to ensure the development deal happens. This is followed by the amazing shot where the mother gets drunk due to her internal conflict, all you see is her hand with the glass framed to the side going in and out of focus as she drinks. Even with those seeds, the rest of the film does not live up to the hype, knocking Fighting Delinquents down to the tier of Suzuki or Japanese film completionists only. Sadao’s mother’s refusal to join her son because she sees herself as too low class for the island’s traditional clan system is heartbreaking, but the fact that the plot is essentially the modernizing and breaking of the class system does bring some hope that this type of conflict that breaks up families will be avoided in the future.

I wish they had kept the literal translation of the title – Go to Hell, Hoodlums! It becomes obvious that Awaji Island’s tourist bureau had a hand in the film’s financing. Still, Koji Wada is charismatic as Sadao, and everyone should decorate their room with hand-drawn Western posters, including cowboys, Mexicans in sombreros, and a sign saying “FANKY”! By now you know if you are the type of audience for this fanky movie, so our work here is done, until next film!

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