Smuggler is a live action movie based upon a Japanese manga series by Manabe Shohei that stands out with an eclectic genre mixture and a fusion of extremes that is quite particular for Japanese cinema.
The movie follows three main plots that complement one another. The most detailed one focuses on an indepted former young actor who accepts to work with a tough man that could be his father and a weird elder that could easily be his grandfather. They work for an organized crime syndicate and clean up crime scenes, dispose of the victims' bodies or transport prisoners from one place to another. The second story line revolves around two pitiless extravagant contract killers who get betrayed by a partner and end up being the hunted instead of the hunters. The third story line tells the story of a woman who is married to the boss of a Yakuza clan who decides to betray the family in order to become more powerful. The three story lines get intertwined rather quickly and the viewer follows them from three different perspectives.
Just like many other live action movies, Smuggler is a quite vivid genre mixture. It could be categorized as a coming-of-age drama as it follows a young man dealing with constant failure who desperately tries to hold on to his dreams. It's also an action film with slasher elements as the two contract killers are quite pitiless as they are working with both passion and precision. The torture scenes in the last third of the film are quite tough to watch, so don't watch this with your kids. Smuggler is also a black comedy, including many absurd scenes with strange situation comedy and weird dialogs, for example when the trio who is transporting the bodies of yet another massacre gets controled by the police. In a certain way, Smuggler is also a thriller as one tries to figure out who backstabs whom and especially who orders the different murders.
The movie has quite a few shifts in tone but its vivid weirdness actually keeps it together and reminds of Japanese V-Cinema of the nineties and early millennium. The protagonist is depicted as a naive loser, becomes a lowly estimated criminal meandering between cleverness and clumsiness and ends up being tortured and torturing in a very graphic way. This character development exemplifies this vivid movie perfectly.
Obviously, this type of cinema isn't for everyone but those familiar with Japanese cinema will definitely like smuggler. The story is so complex and rich that one could easily watch this movie on several occasions. It's an energizing ride that keeps getting better and better. It's difficult to give it a higher rating because the movie is all over the place but I enjoyed watching it and would definitely recommend it to those who like directors like Miike Takashi or even Quentin Tarantino.
