When an actor accustomed to playing support parts gets to take the lead, it can be a glorious thing to behold. With his long, lean face and rangy physique, Yukiya Kitamura has seldom wanted for screen work, but he had to wait until his 40s before he started landing main roles.
Maybe it’s because he’s improved with age. Now 48 and increasingly craggy, he’s a perfect fit for Kotaro Ikawa’s film noir throwback, “Old School.” Kitamura plays Shinjiro Renjo, a private eye with a taste for booze and gambling who’s first seen drunkenly trashing an underground poker game before passing out.
This Bacchic rampage puts him in debt to the local yakuza, who ask him to make amends by finding the perpetrator behind a recent arson attack on their office. Meanwhile, Shinjiro is approached by a hostess of Filipino descent, Michiko Garcia (Iriya Take), who wants him to investigate the sudden disappearance of her friend, a Kurdish asylum seeker.