Postman Blues

Tsutsumi is Sawaki, a postman who finds himself making a delivery to an old school chum, Noguchi (Horibe). Noguchi doesn't look at all well. In fact, he's just chopped off his little finger. Being a yakuza is 'one big thrill after another,' he claims. 'And when was the last time your heart pumped like when you were a boy?' Sawaki isn't entirely convinced, but ripping open some mail, he comes across a letter from Kyôko (Toyama), a girl hospitalised with cancer. Moved, he goes to visit her, and befriends another patient, Joe (Ohsugi), who happens to be a professional hitman. Meanwhile the cops come to believe this unassuming postman must be Public Enemy No. 1. Peppered with homages to Wong Kar-Wai, Luc Besson and the samurai masters, this chipper action comedy keeps puncturing the pomposity of the tradition, but it never breaks out of its own cinephilic world view. When any film-maker resorts to pretty cancer victims for romantic interest, you know caution is in order. That said, the film's escalating comedy of errors includes plenty of nice touches, and there's an underlying innocence about its conception which is likeable enough.