In-between Buñuel and Clouzot, Suzuki’s film is a nicely paced and carefully crafted depiction of the post-WWII society in Japan via its wide representation of distinct characters, solidly performed, in a well-structured exciting journey.

A stalled train. A bunch of impatient passengers. An old bus taking a dangerous road. Two fugitive bank robbers. All these elements are what sparks this thrilling adventure throughout the roads of an intimidating mountain during which the different personalities and ideologies of the passengers will collide as they also must confront the threat of the two ruthless thugs.

The Buñuelian element to this story is clearly presented in its characters and the micro-space into which they are forced to stay for the next several hours. Inside the bus we find a single mother and her child, a young girl dreaming of becoming the next Setsuko Hara, two communist students, a woman and her lover, a prostitute, a murderer being transported by a police detective, a small entrepreneur, an important business owner and his wife, a driver who only cares about the state of his bus, and an old-married couple. The use of an enclosed environment in which conflict between characters could arise and the various sociological and political messages of the story could be exploited was a trademark of the Spanish filmmaker, as he would approach such mannerisms in his 60s films Viridiana (1961) and El Ángel Exterminador (1962) and even before during his Mexican period in the film La Ilusión Viaja en Tranvía (1954), in which we would find ourselves in a similar situation to the one presented here (albeit way more surrealistic) during a sequence early in the film set in this case in a streetcar.

Obviously, this will be the perfect set-piece in which unfold a great variety of clashes: the students against the business owners, the discomfort of being with a criminal, the level difference between the two businessmen, the shaming of the prostitute, the rush of the travellers against the caution of the driver… This will have obvious effects on how the characters are portrayed, sometimes isolated, sometimes as a unit. But, the most interesting element, although cliché, is how well are represented those that have the externally perceived lower status, such as the murderer and the sex worker, as the ones with the higher morality becoming in many ways the heroes of the story.

On the other hand, on the macro-level we see the common challenges that the group faces. Those are both of natural as well as human capacity, being the rocky road that they must endure and two gangsters respectively. The geological environment and tricky roadways that they must overcome are overtly familiar to those of Clouzot’s Le Salaire de la Peur (1954), non-trustworthy bridges, muddy and narrow mountain roads and rockfalls are some of the inconveniences that our characters find along the way, but in their case the nitro-glycerine shipment takes human form as the two unstable and violent delinquents that act as ticking bombs. The criminals are effectively portrayed as sleazy and ruthless, not backing down in recurring to violence, when necessary, they act also as the perfect element that could unite our diverse group.

The highpoint from these external factors is the violence brought to the table by the presence of the gangsters. Suzuki does not manage to create a very tense atmosphere with their presence, and the resolution is quite intuitive, but when it comes to the actual cruelty and sadism of these characters, Suzuki surely goes over what may have been the norm at the time. Here we have criminals who will shot you without overthinking it, they will throw you from a running bus and laugh about it, they will sexually assault you, or they will even point a gun directly to a baby´s head in order to have one’s own way (honestly, I believe that this last aspect would even shock and raise some eyebrows in some of the current audiences).

What we end up getting is certainly a very derivative film from other already treated forms and ideas, when it comes to its foundations, but the success here is the fact that Suzuki can mix those genres and styles very well into a great cohesive piece. The small-scale sociological study is interesting and the surrounding more action-based plot are perfectly intertwined and condensed in its barely over one-hour runtime making us enjoy thoroughly this otherwise nightmarish ride for the characters in the story.