Ostensibly a murder mystery but more a romantic drama with strong social overtones, "The Crimson Kimono" comes armed with noble intentions and the stylistic panache you associate with director- writer Samuel Fuller, but not much in the way of a story.
A stripper named Sugar Torch is gunned down one night on a busy Los Angeles street. Detective Sgt. Charlie Bancroft (Glenn Corbett) and his partner Joe Kojaku (James Shigeta) develop a lead with the help of a young artist named Chris (Victoria Shaw). Both men also develop strong feelings for Chris, which leads to sparks and considerable misunderstandings after she makes her decision.
In a DVD doc that comes with this movie, director Curtis Hanson notes that this "fits in no genre except the Sam Fuller genre," which is a great description. "The Crimson Kimono" starts with a typical Fuller bang, a big brassy stripper doing her act and then walking into a dressing-room ambush. The killing doesn't really make sense, either as it goes down or when you think about it after the movie is over, but it makes an impression, which is why Fuller was Fuller.
The problem of the murder isn't only its incoherence, but the way it is swept under the rug so soon in favor of a social-issues drama which ostensibly deals with racism but is really about a guy his partner correctly describes at one point as a "meathead." At one point, we hear Bancroft even say "Nobody cares who killed that tramp," which is a heckuva line from a homicide detective except it fits with the mood of the film.
Corbett and Shigeta make for a sturdy pair in their film debuts, so much so we care more about their issues as the story develops than we do about any progress they make on the case. Too much time is spent on a secondary character, Mac (Anna Lee), who drinks, smokes, and dispenses enough folky wisdom about art and love we come to understand that she's basically Sam in a dress.
Lovers of the quintessential Fuller argot will have a field day here: "I'll have to tap her for a raincheck." "You tackle Rembrandt at the school and I'll shortstop Shuto." "You believe that eyewash?" All the above lines are from Kojaku, who seems like the last person to suffer a big emotional crisis by suddenly discovering he's a Japanese- American. But he does, because it's that kind of movie.
Fuller fans will appreciate the film's dynamics at play, the way he challenges the audience by setting up a potential romance between Bancroft and Chris and then pushing the race buttons once he's got you thinking you're all assimilated. It's a strange sort of racial- issues story in that none of the white characters seem to have serious hang-ups. Fuller did like to complicate racial issues in his movies, but the curves that worked so well in "Shock Corridor" kind of flop here.
Sam Leavitt's cinematography captures a somewhat hallucinatory Los Angeles at night, with smoky nimbi hanging over characters as they prowl lonely alleyways and pool halls. As a police procedural, "Crimson Kimono" has the right atmosphere.
Liking the atmosphere, the characters, and the tangy Fuller spirit is not enough when the story doesn't connect. In the end, you are left with a film about failure to communicate that itself doesn't really communicate much of anything other than the wrongness of jumping to conclusions and the need for a good mystery to care more than a little at the end as to whodunit.
A stripper named Sugar Torch is gunned down one night on a busy Los Angeles street. Detective Sgt. Charlie Bancroft (Glenn Corbett) and his partner Joe Kojaku (James Shigeta) develop a lead with the help of a young artist named Chris (Victoria Shaw). Both men also develop strong feelings for Chris, which leads to sparks and considerable misunderstandings after she makes her decision.
In a DVD doc that comes with this movie, director Curtis Hanson notes that this "fits in no genre except the Sam Fuller genre," which is a great description. "The Crimson Kimono" starts with a typical Fuller bang, a big brassy stripper doing her act and then walking into a dressing-room ambush. The killing doesn't really make sense, either as it goes down or when you think about it after the movie is over, but it makes an impression, which is why Fuller was Fuller.
The problem of the murder isn't only its incoherence, but the way it is swept under the rug so soon in favor of a social-issues drama which ostensibly deals with racism but is really about a guy his partner correctly describes at one point as a "meathead." At one point, we hear Bancroft even say "Nobody cares who killed that tramp," which is a heckuva line from a homicide detective except it fits with the mood of the film.
Corbett and Shigeta make for a sturdy pair in their film debuts, so much so we care more about their issues as the story develops than we do about any progress they make on the case. Too much time is spent on a secondary character, Mac (Anna Lee), who drinks, smokes, and dispenses enough folky wisdom about art and love we come to understand that she's basically Sam in a dress.
Lovers of the quintessential Fuller argot will have a field day here: "I'll have to tap her for a raincheck." "You tackle Rembrandt at the school and I'll shortstop Shuto." "You believe that eyewash?" All the above lines are from Kojaku, who seems like the last person to suffer a big emotional crisis by suddenly discovering he's a Japanese- American. But he does, because it's that kind of movie.
Fuller fans will appreciate the film's dynamics at play, the way he challenges the audience by setting up a potential romance between Bancroft and Chris and then pushing the race buttons once he's got you thinking you're all assimilated. It's a strange sort of racial- issues story in that none of the white characters seem to have serious hang-ups. Fuller did like to complicate racial issues in his movies, but the curves that worked so well in "Shock Corridor" kind of flop here.
Sam Leavitt's cinematography captures a somewhat hallucinatory Los Angeles at night, with smoky nimbi hanging over characters as they prowl lonely alleyways and pool halls. As a police procedural, "Crimson Kimono" has the right atmosphere.
Liking the atmosphere, the characters, and the tangy Fuller spirit is not enough when the story doesn't connect. In the end, you are left with a film about failure to communicate that itself doesn't really communicate much of anything other than the wrongness of jumping to conclusions and the need for a good mystery to care more than a little at the end as to whodunit.