Sailor Suit and Machine Gun 4K 1981

I’ll say right off the bat—this is a very good movie, and I highly recommend it to all fans of the “crime drama” genre. The film is dramatic when it needs to be and comedic when it needs to be; it features action scenes as well as philosophical reflections followed by a moral lesson, which are characteristic of Asian cinema.

An ordinary, shy, naive, and kind high school girl becomes the boss of a crumbling mafia clan. That’s what the movie is about—the girl shows strength of character as she tries to revive the yakuza family that has become her own, settles scores with rivals, and attempts to investigate her father’s murder, which, as it turns out, wasn’t an accident, as the police had believed.

Now, my take on the movie:

The movie turned out very well; as I mentioned above, it has elements of comedy, action, drama, and mystery, as well as several plot threads—the search for a missing heroine, the hunt for her father’s killers, and simply the attempts of someone with no prior connection to the mafia to fit into the yakuza hierarchy.

It’s an engaging watch. Despite the overall absurdity of the plot—a girl becoming the head of a yakuza clan; could that even happen?—the film feels very realistic. The female protagonist comes across as authentic, and as you watch, you really start to think that if this were happening in real life, everything would play out exactly as shown in the movie.

The film is very heartfelt—you could even call it “heartwarming”—and you start rooting for the heroine from the very first scenes. In some places, the film is quite naive, but that’s only here and there, and it isn’t too annoying. Of course, as in most Japanese films, we’re given a few moral lessons about honor, friendship, loyalty, duty, and so on. But that’s standard fare, and besides, these lessons aren’t at all annoying—unlike similar moral lectures in, say, some shōnen anime. So, it’ll be interesting to watch even for those who aren’t familiar with the common tropes and clichés of Asian films. It’s a pretty solid, self-contained, and original film. Not a masterpiece, but very well-made. The actors perform well, the soundtrack isn’t annoying, and the plot doesn’t come across as nonsense. At the end of the film—as is traditional—they sing an “enka” song.