Doberman Cop

An oddly manic crime thriller where the genre's 70s exploitation dressings (or lack thereof) are certainly in effect, but largely overshadowed by the camera-reeling verve of Chiba's eccentric wildman detective from Okinawa. Ironically more cartoonish than the source, which the film does not attempt fidelity to. Highlights include a two-fisted rappelling sequence, a cute pig, and Janet Hatta doing a spectacularly unconvincing job lip-syncing to a torch song by pop legend Mieko Hirota.

After all the gritty realistic yakuza movies Fukasaku made this lighter manga-based entertainment with an ass kicking Sonny Chiba wielding a Dirty Harry inspired .44 Magnum. The quirky comedy about a country bumpkin cop being a fish out of the water in the big city clashes tonally with the gritty crime aspect of the movie at times.

This was a bit like Chiba's version of "Coogan's Bluff" with a cop from the country side coming to the city. Culture clash aside, there's a gritty murder case that takes place in music industry. Fukasaku's energetic style is a nice fit to Chiba's fights and as is common to Japanese genre flicks, the plot is way better and complicated than your usual US genre stuff; you need to stay focused to keep up with it. It's also one of few cases where I thought the animal "sidekick" was actually funny.