A
rusty slow boat is always a good noir setting. The crew and stowaways on the
good ship Kaiyo Maru would not be so out of place in classics like Across the Pacific and Journey into Fear, but they sing more.
It seems like a stretch to call it a musical, but there is still a fair amount
of crooning and uke strumming in Umetsugu Inoue’s The Eagle and the Hawk, which screens as part of Japan’s Music Man,
the Japan Society’s weekend retrospective of Inoue’s musicals.
First
Mate Goro’s father was murdered shortly before he shipped out with Captain Onizame,
his dad’s old sea crony. They both always assumed he would marry Onizame’s
daughter Akiko, but she has him pegged squarely in the raised-like-siblings
corner of the friend-zone. Rather awkwardly, she is more attracted to the
rebellious new sailor Senkichi Nomura, who rather recklessly implies he is the
murderer to Sasaki, another new crewman.
Frankly,
Akiko was not supposed to join her father on this run to Hong Kong, but she
decided to play stowaway. She is not the only one. The dysfunctionally
codependent Akemi has also followed her contemptuous lover Nomura on-board,
setting the stage for a four-way romantic conflict. In all fairness, it should be
stipulated Nomura and Goro are quite civil towards each other, considering the former
most likely killed the latter’s father and is definitely romancing his presumed
fiancée. For a hot-headed rebel, Nomura also gets on quite well with Sasaki,
whom he and Akiko suspect to be an undercover cop. That is all fine and
reasonable, but somebody must be behind the mysterious accidents plaguing the
ship.
Eagle helped launch Yujiro
Ishihara’s career, along with Stormy Man,
but the real star for contemporary noir fans will be Rentarô Mikuni as the
often bare-chested Sasaki, out-Mitchuming Robert Mitchum, in a way that is both
steely and laidback. Ishihara might be the brooding heartthrob, but Mikuni is
just ultra-cool. Of course, he leaves the singing to Ishihara’s Nomura.
The
ensemble is packed with colorful characters, but Tôru Abe is probably the
saltiest as Matsu, the fugitive bosun, who doubles as the voice of the film’s
conscience. Ruriko Asaoka is the picture of plucky purity as Akiko, but Yumeji
Tsukioka is far more engaging and poignant as the defiantly lovestruck Akemi.