Back in June, TCM ran a spotlight on jazz in the movies, and it gave me the chance to record a foreign film that had an interesting-sounding synopsis: The Warped Ones. Recently, I finally got around to watching it.
Akira is a jerk who cavorts with prostitut Yuki who go around committing petty and not-so petty crimes while Akira berates people for not liking authentic jazz music. His assholish behavior harassing foreign tourists eventually gets him turned in to the police by journalist Kawashigi, sending both Akira and Yuki to a reformatory.
After getting out of the reformatory, Akira wants to get revenge on Kawashigi. He's met Masaru, a fellow young hoodlum who wants to join the yakuza, and together, Akira, Masaru, and Yuki go around causing general mayhem because, well, they can, I suppose.
Eventually, Akira goes to an artists' colony where he meets Kawashigi again, and Kawashigi's girlfriend Fumiko. This gives Akira his idea for a way of getting that revenge. Both Yuki and Fumiko get pregnant, Fumiko and Kawashigi think about killing Akira in a gas line "accident", and then there's the finale with the two men and two women; Masaru got himself killed trying to join the yakuza.
In and among all this, Akira continues to act like a jerk and trying to listen to all sorts of jazz. There's a scene at an art exhibit, another scene where Akira winds up going to the beach with a black American jazz musician, and some other stuff.
But don't expect much of a plot. The movie is basically 75 minutes of Akira being a nasty piece of shit who deserves his block knocked off but never gets it. As you can tell, I hated this movie, which has no redeeming story or characters, and never gets interesting. If I were going to mention Japanese delinquents, I'd much rather recommend Cruel Story of Youth, which I blogged about ages ago and is much more interesting.
The Warped Ones did get a DVD release on one of the Criterion Collection's Eclipse sets.
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