Take Aim at the Police Van

The Nikkatsu Company conceived Take Aim at the Police Van as a borderless action film, a studio subgenre with internationalized characters and setting. Contract director Seijun Suzuki had previously worked mainly on pop song films, a youth subgenre in which the films were built around an already popular song, and yakuza films with an occasional film noir bent.[1] It also marked the beginning of his practice of co-writing his films.[2] Leading man Michitaro Mizushima had also starred in Suzuki's Underworld Beauty two years earlier. He was atypical of borderless action films by virtue of his age, forty-eight at the time, as they typically featured Nikkatsu's younger stars such as Yujiro Ishihara and Akira Kobayashi.[1]

Take Aim at the Police Van was released in Japan by the Nikkatsu Company on January 27, 1960.[3] It was subsequently released in a five-film DVD box set, titled Nikkatsu Noir, in North America on August 25, 2009, under The Criterion Collection's Eclipse label. The set focuses on noir-themed Nikkatsu Action films and also includes I Am Waiting (1957), Rusty Knife (1958), Cruel Gun Story (1964) and A Colt Is My Passport (1967) with liner notes by film historian Chuck Stephens.[4]

The A.V. Club's Noel Murray felt the film holds up against contemporary Hollywood film noirs. Rating it less abstract than Seijun Suzuki's films of a few years later, he highlighted its vim and social candor and named it "[a testament] to how artists pumping out quickie exploitation product can often work in truths about their times that prestige filmmakers can't."[5]

• Original trailer at The Criterion Collection
• Take Aim at the Police Van at IMDb
• Take Aim at the Police Van (in Japanese) at the Kinema Junpo Movie Database