FILM REVIEW – GOLGO 13.
Subtitled Assignment Kowloon, this dire 1977 film is based on a very popular Japanese Manga
comic book series. Golgo has appeared in several films and cartoons before and since. He is a Jackal/ Scaramanga style ultra-efficient
assassin, who has a reputation for never missing a shot. Sonny Chiba plays the killer, whose name is based on the 13th soldier in the passion of Christ, the man who supposedly put the crown of thorns on Jesus’s head.
Chiba was a leading Martial Arts exponent, but there is very little unarmed combat in this film, so we don’t see him at his best. He mostly wanders around in humourless brooding moods.
Hired by
gangsters to take down a crime lord in a turf war, Golgo finds his mission hampered by a cop (Callan Yeoung) who is trying to arrest the same man. Things come to a head when the gang leader they both want is due to open a new public swimming pool (the people think the gangster is a pillar of the community). As Golgo is about to strike, another assassin gets the man first. Golgo thinks he has been betrayed by his own men but accepts a bounty to take on the unknown other killer when they convince him they are not behind it. It turns out to be an American diplomat called Polansky, who receives serous police protection on an island fortress, but Golgo creates a riot so the police will fly the man out and then shoots the target at ridiculous range even though he is in the helicopter, having calculated precisely its exact escape route.
Despite being an action flick, with lots of violence and some nudity, the film is quite dull and unspirited. The only great moment is the closing one in which Golgo and the policeman meets. Lamenting that he couldn’t arrest him, for lack of evidence, Callan settles for punching the killer and walks away as Golgo leaves on the next plane out.
The daftest scene is the opening one where two gangsters in a beachfront hotel spot Golgo in a small boat out at sea through their binoculars. They realize it is he, and see him point a high velocity rifle straight towards them. They bet one another that he can’t fire it that far, but of course he can. The first man takes a bullet and the second simply freezes as Golgo reloads and takes aim again, giving him plenty of time to get off the balcony, but he keeps watching in frozen horror as his own death comes to him. Utterly laughable stuff.
Arthur Chappell