V-Cinema Essentials 8: Danger Point: The Road to Hell

As I approached Yasuharu Hasebe’s (Black Tight Killers) Danger Point: The Road to Hell, I did start to wonder why the need for dual titles across so much of V-Cinema? Perhaps the need to grab your audience in the video rental shops of old. Twice the title, twice the hook? Perhaps... 

Anyway, to the film itself. 

Two hitmen, one younger (Show Aikawa) and his older compatriot (Jo Shishido), take on a contract against a policeman named Sakai, but not before their hapless victim begs to live and suggests there’s more money to be made by not killing him... 

But kill Sakai they are do and the only clue to what he was on about is a nervous nurse who once met Sakai. 

Any film noir fans out there watching Danger Point: The Road to Hell will know what’s about to happen, because the plot and structure borrows mercilessly from Robert Siodmak’s The Killers, supplementing it with elements of Don Siegel’s 1960’s version, especially the change to the protagonists being hitmen. While this could feel derivative it doesn’t and if anything added to the pleasure of watching the film unfold because I found myself intrigued how Hasebe might deviate from those two previous works. Also, it mattered because tonally, Danger Point: The Road to Hell is very much a film noir. Though historically we’re in the territory where people think of and talk about film as neo-noir, but something about this film felt more in tune with the 1940’s or 1950’s, perhaps because it was not trying to be revisionist, rather playing around with old stories, retooling them only slightly. 

But for those not conversant with The Killers (and if not you really should watch them, especially Siodmak’s version), Danger Point: The Road to Hell is often told in flashback, as our two hitmen go from person to person, and the story of the money, of the crime from which the money came from, unfolds. It’s a gradual piecing together of the puzzle, even if - as noted - if you know The Killers you’ll already know the real story, and there’s a great deal of pleasure to be had in this.

Much of the enjoyment comes from the pairing of the two hitmen, Aikawa and Shishido. Young and old, early V-Cinema star and one of Nikkatsu’s diamond guys. They have real rapport and it’s an absolute joy to see Shishido too in a meaty lead role. Though sometimes Aikawa can seem a bit like an actor playing a hitman, Shishido effortlessy falls back into the familiar role – I mean, thinking of him in Branded to Kill helps – but their relationship is well developed. They are friends, colleagues but also they are hitmen and in this sense utterly professional, which the film never forgets. They kill and they do so often, without compunction but also without malice, approaching the job in an everyday manner, working together in unison. As such there really is a sense that these two people exists together and have a past, even if their future is uncertain. Sometimes it’s in the small things, like Aikawa putting a gun together in the car, in preparation to shoot someone. Shishido is outside the car and he continually adjusts his body to block anyone outside seeing in; then when it comes to Aikawa aiming and firing, Shishido again angles himself to shield Aikawa’s actions. It’s quietly done but provides a real air of realism, as far as any realism can go in such a film. Equally, we see that Shishido drinks alcohol, Aikawa only drinks Perrier water. The film never makes a thing of this, it’s just part of its mis-en-scene, but it’s there quietly in the background; Hasebe makes of them real people in surprisingly unobtrusive ways. 

It also illustrates Hasebe as a director, because Danger Point: The Road to Hell is completely no-nonsense. It's direct, taut and with a few exceptions there’s no fat on the bone of the narrative and when there is it has a point. There’s arguably a little unnecessary nudity but even that is to define character, Aikawa’s younger hitman clearly has a kink for S&M, mostly on the sadism side, and Shishido notes that there this the more unpleasant side of his young compatriot’s personality. So they are not always entirely in agreement but also accepting of each other’s differences. 

Just another day at the office

Returning to the story it’s then a corkscrew of cross and double-cross. Veteran actor Hideo Murota gets a nice role as Takamura, the man behind the heist that causes the story to occur. The film also deviates from The Killers template, introducing new characters, and taking the double-crosses to new heights and arguably too much so. In the film’s desire to perhaps show us a totally venal society it undermines some aspects of characterisation that the film is at pains to set up, so I did feel the ending went too far in this, but it’s not great concern and at least it does not give us what many pre-war film noir did, a happy tacked on ending. Instead the film absorbs and plays back a nihilism that is entirely appropriate for the early 1990’s. 

Anyone looking for a taut, no-nonsense, morally murky double-cross of a thriller could do worse than Danger Point: The Road to Hell. Hasebe keeps it moving at speed and our two leads have a great rapport, complementing each other beautifully. So get on that road to hell and enjoy.