I watched this shortly before it left Tubi at the end of March, and I’m so relieved that April hasn’t—in streaming terms—left it homeless. I wanted to commend Pray for Death to your attention, and commend it I shall.
This is a gleeful victory of action over taste, restraint, and common sense. It’s gaudy, blood-spattered proof that grit and realism aren’t interchangeable. It’s also proof that a movie doesn’t need realism as long as everyone involved commits wholeheartedly to the story’s batshit internal logic.
Pray for Death opens with an old school ninja rampage, with the always badass Sho Kosugi laying action-packed waste to a veritable army of his more inept, gray-garbed counterparts (look, you get what you pay for with budget ninjas). But this scene—historical and rural—gives way: it’s just a movie the two young Saito boys are watching. Hey, that ninja looks a lot like their dad! Promising young salaryman Akira Saito (Sho Kosugi again) chuckles. Now, kids, everyone knows there are no more ninjas.
But—gasp!—Saito is a former ninja himself! In one of many scenes I will fondly call “inexplicable but nonetheless incredible,” we find out that Saito hung up his nunchaku after his traitorous brother (also a ninja) died while committing ninja crimes. Saito likes making dramatic career decisions, so, despite being on the verge of a major promotion, he goes along with his wife’s whim to uproot their lives from Japan to Houston. They’re going to open a Japanese restaurant. In an extremely rundown, impoverished, crime-ridden neighborhood. In Texas. In 1985. Honestly, this could become a grim tale of one family’s total financial collapse, so it’s probably for the best that we turn to some nice lively violence instead.
Saito and his wife, Aiko (Donna Kei Benz), acquire a surprisingly diverse amount of property from eccentric, gently pathetic widower Sam Green (Parley Baer): living quarters, a restaurant, a mannequin warehouse with a sawmill loft, and a disused cigar shop that Sam locked up for good after his wife and business partner died. Unbeknownst to Sam, crooked cops moonlighting for a local gang have been storing stolen goods in the cigar shop. Unbeknownst to the local gang, one of those cops has decided he’s not getting a big enough cut, so he’ll be making off with the priceless Van Adda necklace he helped stash. Recovering the stolen necklace falls to enforcer Limehouse Willie (James Booth, also our beloved screenwriter). Limehouse Willie? Not a man prone to Hamlet-like fits of indecision. Limehouse Willie may not technically know who took the necklace, but if he kills, beats, kidnaps, and burns enough people, eh, either he’ll eventually figure it out or he’ll have a great time at work.
Wilie starts with the hapless Sam Green, giving him the kind of cackle-inducing over-the-top death that establishes the movie’s essential mood (that mood is “on fire”). Well, if it’s not Sam, maybe it’s one of the Saitos. Better kidnap one of the kids as leverage! It’s fine. Their dad is a would-be restauranteur, not a ninja—OH NO. Oh, somebody’s going to be praying for death.
I summarized so much of the lead-up to the crime plot here in order to bask in how needlessly bananas it is. It’s like it never even occurred to Booth that he could have had Saito cross the mob by—for example—refusing to comply with a protection racket. No Occam’s razor here. We’re doing Occam’s ninja star. With everything.
What Pray for Death understands, correctly, is that suspension of disbelief allows you one bonkers plot element, particularly as part of a story’s fundamental premise. It doesn’t allow you two. It does, however, allow you infinity, especially if everyone, including the stunt coordinators and action choreographers, plays it straight—and they do. This all takes place at a consistent, competently portrayed level of reality; it’s just not a reality anyone else has ever been in. This is how you script your movie if you want to eventually have a fight scene that answers the age-old question of “ninja vs. Leatherface, who would win?” Answer: all of us.
Pray for Death is streaming on Fubo, MGM+, Philo, and … Tubi again, despite it now being April? I knew you wouldn’t betray me, Tubi!
About the writer
Lauren James
Lauren James is a writer who wears many different hats (and pen names). She lives in Connecticut with her wife and two cats.
Lauren James’s ProfileTags for this article
More articles by Lauren James
Anthologized
A little slice of American folklore that feels like it's been here all along.
Streaming Shuffle
You make your royal bed, and you lie in it.
Anthologized
Alone in vast space and timeless infinity: one man in a ghost town.
Streaming Shuffle
A beautiful slice-of-life film that helped make a career.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Justified, Season One, Episode Four, “Long In The Tooth”
I remember Lauren considered this a weaker episode of the show; I like it a lot, but I have to admit they’re still working out what they can do here. There’s more discussion of movie cliches, somewhat generic philosophising about how the world has changed and become more politically correct, and worse there’s a few outright hack moves like Rollie and Mindy going straight into “women and men be arguing” bullshit. But these feel like a few moments where they really have to reach for inspiration; the basic story is really great and the climax, with Rollie playfully walking into his death (“I’ve had my fun.”) to prevent greater tragedy, is genuinely moving.
What’s important is that the show has locked down many of its necessary aims. We have plot turns, obviously – my favourite is Mindy sneaking out with Rollie’s gold under the cover of tamales, closely followed by Rollie’s friend getting annoyed at him asking for help getting across the border because she’s Mexican – but we also have characters wandering into view for one or two scenes and completely dominating the screen. There’s Lance Barber (better known as Bill Ponderosa around these parts) basically as a goon who dies immediately, but I’m also a fan of Jones, who makes a deal with Rollie for his car, then acts like an asshole to cops who find him before Raylan finds and talks to him.
This speaks to the big thematic element of this: how much of Raylan’s job is negotiating. He can be smug about it, like when he approaches criminals and tells them “Hey, you can keep doing this if you want, but if you do, I’m gonna shoot ya.” But it’s also how he works with witnesses and such; one of the really funny things about the crime genre – and James Ellroy gets this the best – is how both cops and criminals know how it works, and some of the funniest parts of this show are polite negotiations done under absurd circumstances – this episode alone has the conversation between Raylan and the guy he shot as he dies, and then the final conversation between Rollin and Raylan is both bleak and funny.
Raylan connects with the old Mexican man when he lays out exactly what he’s going to do, and how he understands exactly what the Mexican guy wants and is willing to cooperate. This is an aspect of masculinity tied into the show and one I always had an affinity for; to say you’re going to do something and then you do it. In practice, I’ve been disappointed with the reality; for one thing, most men won’t actually stand by their word. You’ve got that study that shows that most neurotypical people are much more inclined to do something they know to be morally wrong when they know nobody will see them do it, and you’ve got the overwhelming evidence that men will fearlessly abandon their wives if she gets debilitatingly sick, to the point that they counsel female patients as soon as this happens. This does not go the other way.
Another thing is that people, at least in my experience, are more likely to get mad at you when you’re honest with them about what you will or will not do, even when it’s presented nonjudgmentally and with a willingness to compromise around it. That’s also on me for being sensitive, obviously, but an aim in life right now is to be in a position where I don’t have to lie to people in order to survive; most people would prefer I flatter their egos, and I need to do this in order to do the things I wanna do. One of the pleasures of Justified is watching Raylan use his position in authority in a fair and evenhanded way and then get away with it. It’s a romanticising of treating people as people.
Also: the dialogue is amazing. I love what it does to the way I write.
Biggest Laugh: “Why’d you become a dentist?” / You’re gonna laugh.” / “Really? That’s your biggest concern right now?”
Top Ownage: Rollie excising a man’s molars without anesthesia. He later describes it as removing them without anesthesia, or permission. “You think I’m a real jerkoff, right? Shut up, it’s rhetorical.”
Whatever I thought right after (re)watching this last time, I have to say, it’s stuck fondly in my memory, mostly because of how funny and vivid and likable Alan Ruck is. He’s one of the show’s best early one-off characters.
It’s a romanticising of treating people as people.
Oh, I like this. I think my favorite S1 example of it is “Blowback,” a.k.a., the One with Dan Dority (huh, how many shows have fantastic S1 episodes named “Blowback”? Because now I can think of at least two).
Admittedly, giving a meaty and likeable part to Alan Ruck is a big selling point to me – I remember how he shows up in an episode of Stargate: Atlantis and it treated him pretty much the same way it treated any other non-Heyerdal non-Picardo guest star, and I was so annoyed.
Oh, that’s obnoxious.
I actually liked that Exorcist show quite a bit, somewhat to my surprise, and Ruck is a regular in its first season and gets some good material.
Hehe yeah Alan Ruck is great in this one. Looking back from the other end of the series I still think the more episodic nature of the first season was pretty great, even if season 4’s unstoppable forward momentum is the show at its peak.
Also great in Succession as the older son who’s crazier than his siblings but also much more human and (slightly) less selfish one on one.
Hell yeah, Con-heads represent!
The dialogue is immediately memorable, I cannot imagine how much fun the writer’s room was. (My friend says I’m good at dialogue which surprised me but sometimes you don’t know your own strengths.) Not a huge fan of the coyote character, who feels like a flat stereotype, but the actor also plays Joe Masseria in Boardwalk Empire and is good at exuding sheer contempt and power. (“…Does he speak English?” “He’s not in the mood.”)
It’s My Turn — Jill Clayburgh has to choose: nebbish jokester Charles Grodin or smoking hot ex-ballplayer Michael Douglas? Of course there is another choice in Claudia Weill’s movie and it takes Clayburgh a while to realize it, perhaps she is distracted by the overbearingly peppy score. There is stuff about “having it all” here and Clayburgh is stuck with the “rom-com lead who has clumsiness as a key character trait” bit but she also has real angst and a late scene with Grodin might be obvious but is very real and uncomfortably so due to Grodin’s propensity for using wisecracks as a way to not listen, a bit close to home there. She has stronger chemistry with Douglas and a scene of them playing games at a hotel’s arcade (why the fuck don’t these exist anymore) is a highlight, Douglas also plays in an actual old-timer’s game at Yankee Stadium so a solid chunk of the movie is being Reminded of Dudes (Mickey Mantle is there!). A good time if not the lost classic some folks have made it out to be.
Bright Future — a young man dies and his father and best friend start hanging out together, filling the void with a burgeoning friendship. But this is a Kiyoshi Kurosawa film and the dead young man (Tadanobu Asano, supremely unsettling in his charisma here and apparently very good in the new Shogun?) was executed after brutally murdering his boss and wife, and doing so before the friend (Joe Odagiri) could do so himself. Asano does give Odagiri his extremely poisonous jellyfish to watch over, though! And the father, Tatsuya Fuji, takes an interest in the invertebrate as well. This is a very odd movie, Kurosawa’s vibes of dissolute youth and a run-down Tokyo get creepy but don’t aim for the full-on menace of Cure and, uh, Creepy — heartwarming music pops in on occasion and in some ways this plays as a parody of Finding Forrester-ish odd couples coping with trauma. A very perceptive review posits Asano as essentially an guardian angel (who again has murdered some annoying but otherwise decent people) in terms of how he’s trying to give Odagiri direction and this too is almost parodic but there’s not a lot going on in his life otherwise and I think Fuji is very clever in how his fatherly figure is also a real schmuck, his asshole estranged son wants nothing to do with him and you can sort of see why. The oddest thing here is how Kurosawa frequently shifts from clear and static/tracking shots to handheld digital murk that can at times be heavily blown out, I couldn’t track much rhyme or reason for this (is it reflecting a hidden point of view) but it’s clearly intentional. An unsettling movie with an ambiguous ending but if nothing else it has great Jellyfish Content.
Oh, Asano steals several scenes in Shogun as Yabaguishe. Also weird timing because I’m listening to the Pippin soundtrack and Clayburgh is in the cast.
Asano is great here as a riff on Cure’s antagonist (protagonist?) but with his own disturbing aura.
Severance, “The After Hours” and “Cold Harbor”
So we do the birthing cabin trick after all. I’m pleased by that, but it leads me to another question: what, in that case, was even the point of all the reintegration surgery? If they still have to resort to the cabin and filmed messages between innie and outie Mark, why did I watch episode after episode of flashback- and hallucination-inducing brain surgery? Why didn’t we just do this cooler thing to begin with? And if outie Mark needs to try to convince innie Mark that reintegration is real and possible, why doesn’t he ever bring up Petey? You know, the reintegrated person he met? Innie Mark’s best friend, who told outie Mark things that outie Mark couldn’t otherwise know? I can’t think of one reason you wouldn’t bring that up!
… which is a shame, because before that plot hole, I was really enjoying the conversation between the two Marks, especially where it hinges on outie Mark’s well-intentioned but condescending dismissal of “Heleny.” Great Adam Scott. Seriously flawed plotting.
Some nice ownage with Dylan and (at least temporarily) Milchick, though. Dylan’s despairing resignation request leading to him firming up his life at Lumon with the newfound conviction that he’s a badass–and being willing to act on that conviction instantaneously and meaningfully–was cool, even if it’s kind of a bummer that he was so cordoned off from the main plot for so long. And Milchick’s confrontation with Drummond was great: I’ve already seen “devour feculence” in the wild, but honestly, the best part is his matter-of-fact, crystal-clear, “It’s not my fault what Mark Scout does when he’s not at work. It’s yours.” Of course, the ownage of this is soon lessened by the fact that next episode, Milchick fails to prevent work Mark from causing a (well-deserved) Lumon catastrophe. It says a lot about how good Tillman is, and how much stronger the writing has been in Milchick’s plot this season, that partway through Gemma’s rescue, I was also like, “Aw, man, this is really going to screw over Milchick. In his job at the dehumanizing torture corporation.” I was really hoping we’d get a last-minute swerve in the finale where Milchick, having realized that work can’t love him back and he’s now screwed anyway, would throw his lot in with the innies out of sheer gotta-stay-alive pragmatism, but alas, not yet.
We finally learn what Cold Harbor is and what the numbers mean, and I feel like it was not quite worth all that build-up, especially since now I just want to know what everyone else’s numbers mean, since it seems like Gemma was the only “patient” on the testing floor.
“Cold Harbor” as an episode actually has some great tension and plotting, as well as great use of the show’s weirdness for actual effect (the marching band! Milchick and the Kier sculpture, and their increasing cattiness!). In fact, there’s one bit of plotting that’s so good–both inevitable and surprising–that I’m now even more annoyed more of the show isn’t like that, because does this mean they could have been doing it all the time? That’s Mark’s innie sparing Drummond to use him as a hostage and then his outie accidentally shooting him with the bolt-gun the second the switch happens anyway–Aw, man, I just shot Drummond in the neck–as an involuntary reflex, and then being able to use his Drummond-blood-soaked tie to open the Cold Harbor door. That’s delightful: swift, on-the-fly improvisation on Mark’s part that works with what we already know about the world in a surprising, intersecting-with-new-events way.
I will allow myself to be pandered to when it’s as specific as the Twilight Zone references in “The After Hours.” I thought it was just going to be the episode title, but no, we get Marsha White looking for a gold thimble as code! Apparently my artistic standard here is “don’t pander to me unless it’s cool enough.” (“You’re just going to throw away all your convictions for a TZ reference?” “I don’t really have any convictions.”)
Along the Great Divide – Kirk Douglas is the new marshal, who arrives just in time to prevent rustler Walter Brennan from being lynched for murdering a rancher’s son. Kirk and his deputies now need to escort Walter, accompanied by his daughter Virginia Mayo, to the nearest town without the rancher’s posse stopping them and without Walter escaping. Oh, and pretty much everyone either has a secret or is otherwise not someone you want to spend a lot of time with. Raoul Walsh, late in his career, does a fairly good job directing, and the complexities of the story work more often than not. But Kirk hated every minute of working with Walsh, and his performance is not exactly nuanced (no one’s is). And the trial at the end feels tacked on. Interesting watching this after seeing The Shooting, seeing how the Trek Across the Desert mutated between this and that.
Kojak, “A Grave Too Soon” – An undercover cop is killed. At first it seems he’s been shot in revenge for his late father’s actions as a cop against a Mob boss. But it’s really about the secret he discovers about the boss’s wife and his lawyer. Some pieces here are interesting, but merging the Mob stuff and the cheating lovers stuff is clumsy. The cast included Daniel J. Travanti, who played a somewhat prickly counter-terrorism cop in season two and plays an entirely different somewhat prickly organized crime bureau cop here; and Diana Hyland, a familiar face at the time for numerous TV and movie roles, only a year before her untimely passing.
Frasier, “Moon Dance” – While Frasier is away with Frederick, Niles makes his first post-Maris date and then needs to learn to dance in a hurry. Which Daphne happily offers to help with. Which in turn turns into the two of them going together instead. The first of many episodes directed by Kelsey Grammer (thus the lack of Frasier this time), and he does a great job setting up and filming Niles and Daphne dancing. And a key episode in the Niles/Daphne arc as he admits to her how he feels, and thinks she feels the same only to learn it was an act to help show everyone that Niles is moving on from Maris. This is Jane Leeves’s favorite episode, and it’s warm and funny and sad, but I like it more than I love it. We do, however, get one of Frasier’s best faces ever when he arrives home just in time to see Niles and Daphne leave on their non-date.
Huh, this sounds like a straight rip of 3:10 to Yuma. Did Leonard sue?
The movie at hand is given credit in the TCM writeup as being the first of its kind. Though no way to know if Leonard saw it.
The Fighting 69th – a Jimmy Cagney World War I movie from 1940. He’s playing the Jimmy Cagney type, full of wisecracks and disrespect for authority. But when he actually gets to the front line, he’s terrified and makes a couple of mistakes that badly let his squadron down. Mostly interesting setup and some decent writing and characters, but the later stages get a bit too far into “of course, the answer is FAITH!” for my tastes. Still, decent watch and one off the backlog, this was in a Cagney box set that I bought for other, more exciting films which is the case for a lot of my unwatched physical media at this point, so it’s reassuring that there was still plenty to enjoy here.
Have only seen one or two Cagney movies but the dude may have invented modern screen acting, he’s predicting the explosions of DeNiro and Pacino in Public Enemy.
He’s a fun screen presence, and I love that he did a bunch of musicals as well as the iconic gangster roles (although I’ve only seen one of them, Footlight Parade). His character in this one could easily come across as insufferable but he has just the right level of mischievous charm to get away with it.
Party Girl is a hoot, more streaming success! Parker Posey is of course luminous, and it’s also a snapshot of diverse, crowded 90’s New York. My friend and I unexpectedly really liked the core relationship between her and godmother Judy – as she says, you don’t see a lot of older-younger female connections like this in movies. This is librarian catnip too (librarians can be hot and damn it, there are standards for being one, as Posey discovers).
Woo, Party Girl! It’s such a delightful movie–funny and fizzy while still taking its characters, their goals, and their relationships seriously.
Party Girl rules, even the growing up aspect of its coming of age is handled well.
Primal
Season 2, Episode 5. “The Primal Theory”. First time.
If you look at that title and think that “theory” is not a word that has any place in the universe of Primal, or with the point of the story it’s currently at, you’re not wrong: the action here jumps forward in time and sideways into something resembling “our” reality. Specifically, “1890, England”, where a society of pompous British scientists gather around in a mansion in the middle of a thunderstorm to hear a young Charles Darwin theorize about how, when faced with death, all creatures will revert to a primal, violent state in order to survive. The rest of the society laughs in his face, even while they’re interrupted by the local constable that comes to warm them about a mad man that’s escaped from the local asylum.
Well, guess who comes to dinner after that.
Soon enough, the escaped mad man arrives to the manor and hunts everyone one by one and, without putting a fine line on it, the show reverts back to its usual form and it becomes an all-out between the hunter and its prey. There are notable differences of course, like the audible dialogue throughout, the use of guns, and a more marked sense of humor from its “monster” (especially when he uses one of his victims as shield) but this is for all intents and purposes the same dynamic and principles that we’ve seen in the show’s anachronistic prehistory. Darwin and society member and former pugilist C.D. Darlington (another historic figure, who I didn’t know) pick up pretty quickly, drop their pretenses of higher civilization and gear up with guns and swords to avoid being killed. Darlington in particular holds his own well, eventually getting as barbaric as his attacker in defense of their lives, though it’s Darwin who lands the most incinsive blow.
It’s a pretty brilliant detour for this show, the kind that’s only possible on a show this confident and so committed to its vision. And in its own way, just as anachronistic and freewheeling as the main show. “From the creator of Dexter’s Laboratory” indeed.
Year of the Month update!
This April, we’ll be looking at 1999, so you can write about any of these movies, albums, books, et al!
TBD: James Williams: 10 Things I Hate About You
TBD: Ruck Cohlchez – Summerteeth/The Soft Bulletin/Utopia Parkway
TBD: Lauren James – Storm of the Century
Apr. 4th: Gillian Rose Nelson: The Straight Story
Apr. 7th: J. “Rodders” Rodriguez: The Scooby Doo Project
Apr. 8th: Bridgett Taylor: …One More Time
Apr. 11th: Gillian Rose Nelson: Balloon Farm
Apr. 18th: Cameron Ward/Cori Domschot: The Mummy
Apr. 18th: Gillian Rose Nelson: The Hand Behind the Mouse
Apr. 22nd: Sam Scott: Broken Things
Apr. 24th: Dave Shutton: American Pie/Class of 1999
Apr. 25th: Gillian Rose Nelson: Disney on DVD
Apr. 28th: Tristan J. Nankervis: The Sixth Sense
And the open call for May starts now! Our year will be 1962, so you can write about any of these movies, albums, books, et al!
May 2nd: Gillian Rose Nelson: Moon Pilot
May 9th: Gillian Rose Nelson: Bon Voyage!
May 16th: Gillian Rose Nelson: Big Red
May 23rd: Gillian Rose Nelson: Almost Angels
May 26th: Tristan J. Nankervis: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
May 30th: Gillian Rose Nelson: In Search of the Castaways
Excellent write-up, you nail how this is such a weird conglomeration. The story is goofy as hell because it’s about giving Booth opportunities to be bad instead of logic (love how he’s like “yeah the crooked cops did this duh” but another half hour goes by before anyone cares), his plan to infiltrate the hospital is hilarious.
That hospital plan is A+. Full-on commitment to the bit, in the wildest way possible, followed by at least two hilarious quick changes once he’s actually in.
And thank you!
This sounds like an absolute blast! This feature has introduced me to to so many things, I need to start actually watching them.
It’s so wild and so much fun! (Uh, assuming one can handle some child endangerment, I should say. No kids actually die, though.) And as someone whose to-watch list keeps infinitely expanding, I am always just happy whenever these pieces get somebody intrigued–I know how long it can take to get around to things!