Masato Harada has been working as a director and scriptwriter for four decades. Since the 2000s, he has become known for densely plotted, dialogue-heavy films based on Japanese history (2015’s “The Emperor in August,” 2017’s “Sekigahara”) or set in contemporary Japan where professionals in high-tension jobs, ranging from media to law, match wits and wills ( 2008’s “Climbers High,” 2018’s “Killing for the Prosecution”).
His latest movie, however, is something of a departure; “Hell Dogs” is a full-bore action film starring Junichi Okada — Japan’s reigning action star — as an undercover police officer in a yakuza gang. Based on a series of novels by Akio Fukamachi and scripted by Harada, the film is not easy-to-digest popcorn entertainment, however. I was often on the edge of my seat, not only for the many hardcore action scenes staged for maximum blood-spattering and bone-crunching impact but also to figure out what was going on as characters rattled off reams of exposition. Also, Harada, a fan of Hollywood noir, has tossed in a flurry of movie references, including the 1955 Sam Fuller classic, “House of Bamboo.”
But the film’s look — ranging from the stark, minimalistic gang offices to an abandoned deluxe spa where much of the fighting unfolds — reminds me of Ridley Scott’s 1989 film “Black Rain”: Both films inhabit highly stylized spaces that verge on dark-future sci-fi, though Scott’s smoky, exoticized Osaka has more of a “Blade Runner” vibe. In either case, the setting does not resemble that of a typical yakuza film, where low-level hoodlums chow down on convenience store food and run their scams out of hole-in-the-wall offices.