Proxy War (1973)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Proxy War (1973) – K. Fukasaku

This third installment in Kinji Fukasaku’s Yakuza Papers series seems to take up where the first film (Battles without Honor & Humanity) left off, with barely an acknowledgement of the second film (Deadly Fight in Hiroshima).  Maybe that’s because many or most of the characters in the second film were dead by the end.  Or perhaps the filmmakers wisely chose to place the cool Bunta Sugawara (playing Shozo Hirono again) at the center of the action – he’s charismatic and his own man, despite declaring loyalty to his former boss the grovelling and untrustworthy Yamamori yet again.  Indeed, no one really can be trusted in the yakuza world and there are plenty of double (and maybe triple) crosses here.  In fact, as with the other two films that preceded it, most viewers of Proxy War will be hard pressed to keep the players straight.  Suffice it to say that the Muraoka family merges with the Yamamori family but the Akashi family still dominates the Hiroshima scene – it looks like there isn’t room for everybody and a battle begins.  However, it must take place in the next film.  So Proxy War is something of a transition piece, but it still has lots of style (and lots of blood) to keep viewers engaged.