Japanese Noir Movies

Businessmen arrange the early release from prison of Togawa, serving time for taking revenge on the truck driver whose carelessness confined Togawa's...

Koreyoshi Kurahara's ingeniously plotted, pocket-size noir concerns the intertwined fates of a desperate bank manager, blackmailed for book-cooking,...

Yoshida's first feature follows the lives of young students against a background of jazz, emptiness and boredom. The plot is fairly simple: a...

Udaka is a new, post-war city where corruption has already taken hold. A persistent district attorney wants to arrest and convict Katsumata, a...

Freelance reporter “Scoop” Machida is hot on the trail of a prostitution ring called the Black Line, when he is framed for the murder of...

A top police-guard, charged with protecting a visiting politician and ruthless dictator, contends with an assassin set to kill the man.

High-end cabaret hostess Masuko discovers her long-term lover is actually married. Determined to secure her future, she aggressively manipulates him...

A noir drama depicting the downfall of a veteran detective who hates evil and falls into its depths. Ace detective Sugai pursues Chiyo, the mistress...

After a successful robbery the culprits, from very different backgrounds, at once turn on each other.

The murder of the chief official of Kobe city's Customs triggers an investigation of a prostitution ring called the 'Yellow Line' that sells Japanese...

College students come up with a scam to rob a gambling house. When it comes time to collect, the money isn't there, leading the young men into even...

Shortly after arriving in Kobe, "Jiro the Lefty", a killer with a natural talent, witnesses a man die in a crane accident which turns out to be a...

A former boxer gets involved with a club hostess trying to escape the clutches of her gangster employer.

It tells the story of a couple who fall into a trap set up by a sinister organization. One of them is a guy who is framed for the murder of his...

When 150 guns are stolen from Iwakuni base and two police officers are shot dead, a detective criminal tries to find out the truth.

Two young crooks who scam betters in the race track are employed by a yakuza gang called the Shigemori Syndicate to steal a shipment of handguns from...

A youth drama set in a Japanese university which is home to a group of active, leftist students.

A noir action whodunit with Kobayashi his usual jaunty self as the smart aleck private eye whose missing person search soon becomes a murder case....

Journalist Kuroki is investigating clandestine arms sales to Southeast Asia. He discovers that the point man in an arms trade was also involved in...

Film director and screenwriter Seijun Suzuki (1923-2017), who in the sixties was the great innovator of Japanese cinema; and his collaborator, art...