Japanese studios used to grind out contemporary action movies by the dozen, with one company, Nikkatsu, specializing in them from the '50s to the early '70s. Stars like Yujiro "Tough Guy" Ishihara, Akira "Mite Guy" Kobayashi and Keiichiro "Tony" Akagi wowed action fans here in film after gun-blazing film.
What happened? Hollywood upped the violence and special effects ante -- and the Japanese, hobbled by regulatory and budgetary restraints, were unable to call, let alone raise. If a Japanese producer tried to stage the car chase from "The French Connection" in Tokyo he'd never get the first bureaucratic stamp on his permission form.
Long after Nikkatsu abandoned action for the delights of porn, a production company called Robot discovered a fresh way to adapt the genre to the local market. Instead of competing head-to-head with Hollywood, Robot's "Odoru Daisosasen (Bayside Shakedown)" -- a 1998 cop thriller based on a popular Fuji TV show -- focused on the bloodless but realistic conflict between elite police and cops on the beat, while throwing in plenty of farcical comedy. The result was the year's biggest domestic hit -- and it didn't have a single explosion. In 2003, "Odoru" director Katsuyuki Motohiro returned with a sequel that, using nearly the same cast and story arc, raked in 17.3 billion yen -- an all-time record for a nonanimated Japanese film.
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