In the entertaining A Colt Is My Passport, Jo Shishido plays an expert hit man, employed by one Japanese mob leader to assassinate the leader of the rival gang. Right away, the score, music that seems knocked off from Ennio Morricone, gives away that this is not a regular yazuka movie.
A Colt Is My Passport, released in 1967, is clearly influenced by Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (1963), For a Few Dollars More (1964) and possibly The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) both in music and cinematography. (This is only fair, because Leone himself copied Akira Kurosawa movies.) Takashi Nomura is the director.
This is hit man as anti-hero. He lives by a code, but he is betrayed by the bosses. He is offended by treachery, but he’s not surprised by it.
The ending is singularly spectacular. It’s a great action sequence, as the hit man, seemingly trapped on a barren wasteland at the mercy of an impregnable armored car, must execute a remarkable stratagem. Again, stylistically, it resonates of the mano a mano desert showdowns in the Leone pictures.
Actor Jo Shishido starred in a zillion other Japanese crime action films, most notably Cruel Gun Story (1964). Oddly, his career as a leading man took off after his plastic surgery, intended to emphasize his cheekbones, left him with puffy chipmunk cheeks.
I was introduced to A Colt Is My Passport on Turner Classic Movies, and it’s often available to stream on Watch TCM and the Criterion Collection,
