Golgo 13
In Tehran, the man in the white suit is jumped, surrounded, overpowered; taken to another location where he is beaten and interrogated, his employers in Beirut are reluctantly forced to conclude that Evans is the fourth operative they have lost in their attempt to break the human trafficking operation headed by the man known as Max Boa, powerful but paranoid, surrounding himself with lookalikes in order to conceal his true identity.
Instead, a more direct approach is chosen: assassination by the feared hitman Duke Togo, a sniper also known as Golgo 13, so named for the hill of Golgotha and the betrayal of the thirteenth man in the company of Jesus and his disciples, travelling across cities and deserts to track a quarry also sought by Beirut police inspector Aman Jafari whose wife Sheila is among the hundreds kidnapped by Boa, his more conventional approach meaning he sees Togo as another outlaw to be arrested.
Inspired by Takao Saito’s Manga of the same name first published in 1968, 1973’s Golgo 13 (ゴルゴ13, Gorugo Sātīn) is the first live action film based on the long-running series, directed by The Bullet Train‘s Junya Sato and starring Black Rain‘s Ken Takakura in the title role of the unstoppable taciturn assassin who eschews accomplices or entanglements in favour of working alone with his high-powered rifle.
Functional rather than stylish and with character secondary to violence and vistas, Mohsen Sohrabi is Jafari and Ahmad Ghadakchian is Boa, while Jaleh Sam is Sheila and Pouri Banayi is Togo’s appointed travelling companion Catherine, abandoned at his earliest opportunity yet later declaring her love for a man who has shown no indication of affection, the plot built on the premise of rescuing women but invariably depicting them as targets or trophies to be abused or admired, of value only for their bodies or the servitude they offer.
Filmed in Iran with a Persian supporting cast, the effect is strange, Togo a man unconcerned about his displacement as if there is no place in which he does belong, disinterested in the reasons behind his assignment or making a good impression on those who hire him, the completion of his mission all that matters, his expectation of deference less about him exuding cool authority than being rude and aloof, a male fantasy as much as the James Bond films of the era but without the panache.
With overplayed death scenes resembling the dance of the dying swan, the unlikely collaboration creates a film more interesting for what it represents than for it actually is, but making its UK Blu-ray debut as part of the Eureka Classics range from a 2K restoration of the original film elements the new edition of Golgo 13 is supported by a newly recorded audio commentary by Mike Leeder and Arne Venema and a new interview with Sato’s biographers Tatsuya Masuto and Masaaki Nomura.
Golgo 13 will be available on Blu-ray from Eureka from Monday 17th July
