THREE GAMBLERS (1967)

Viewers expecting just another ninkyo eiga from Toei will be disoriented by this film's opening shot: a pullback from Our Lady of Penha Chapel to one of the 32 cannons atop the Fortaleza do Monte in Macao. Yes, this is certainly shaping up to be Shigehiro Ozawa Week here at the Temple, isn't it? And I only have 60 or 70 more of his movies to watch.

Four years after killing each other's boss -- and nearly killing each other with axes during work detail -- Naojiro (Koji Tsuruta) and Sugiyama (Kyôsuke Machida) emerge from Abashiri Prison as sworn brothers and head home to Yokohama. Sugiyama's clan has been disbanded thanks to the rotten Koizumi brothers (Toru Abe and Shigeyoshi Fujioka), the same thugs who sent the visiting Naojiro to do their killing for them. Naojiro quickly discovers that his wife Osata, who was pregnant at the time he fulfilled his yakuza obligation, was sold into prostitution by the same damn Koizumi creeps as part of a deal that involves sending teenage girls to flesh-peddling Mr. Chow (Hôsei Komatsu) in Macao in exchange for opium. So Naojiro and Sugiyama set out for Macao to find Osata and wipe out the Koizumi-Chow connection --

"But wait!" you say, "I only count two gamblers! Who's the third?"

That would be Nagano (the great Ryō Ikebe from PALE FLOWER), a wife killer with terminal lung disease who's been dispatched by the brothers Koizumi to kill Naojiro -- and also happens to be sworn brothers with Sugiyama.

Maybe I'm overrating these Ozawa-Tsuruta collaborations (there were at least 30 of them) but they really scratch the Don Siegel-Phil Karlson itch for me, plus the comic relief characters that pop in every so often are actually funny. This time it's a chubby rickshaw driver who idolizes Naojiro and Sugiyama ("Japanese gangsters are so cool"). I also like how "mafia" starts showing up in the subtitling instead of "yakuza," and the machine gun's a nice addition as well -- which reminds me: I'm probably never going to grow tired of seeing Toru Abe get his bloody comeuppance.