LUPIN III: ALCATRAZ CONNECTION (2001)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

This television special pushes the goofy comedy elements of LUPIN more than some others. Though ALCATRAZ is only intermittently funny, its general approach makes the convoluted plot easier to take.

Somewhere in the Pacific off the coast of the U.S. (but implicitly near the abandoned Alcatraz Island), the Lupin Gang raids a gambling ship reputedly run to launder Mafia money. Zenigata, aided by a squad of cops and San Francisco inspector Terry Crown, interrupt the theft and the Gang runs off without the loot. Or do they? Lupin belatedly reveals to his partners that he absconded with computer data about a sunken treasure ship in the vicinity. Lupin somehow knows that the ship is also a cover for an operation to acquire the treasure by a mysterious gang known as the Secret Seven.

The Mafia catches up with the thieves, though they capture only Lupin. The master thief has an encounter with a torturer that almost recalls the dynamic of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, from the way both torturer and victim can pull various gimmicks out of nowhere. Lupin's partners Jigen and Goemon rescue their leader (though Fujiko abstains from the mission). 

In San Francisco straight-arrow Zenigata learns that American cop Crown is something of a reprobate, which in many ways gives away one of the main plot points. There's also a subplot in which Goemon becomes increasingly money-motivated, and this turns out to result from his having taken a young woman under his samurai protection. Viewers of earlier LUPIN sagas will not be surprised at the way this plotline plays out.

The treasure-ship, though, pales in comparison to the discovery that the Secret Seven is using an underground facility beneath Alcatraz Island as their base of operations. On top of that, the wild screenplay ties the Seven into the assassinations of both John F. and Robert Kennedy, apparently going full-tilt into the "Mafia done it" theory. It's a little disconcerting to see as an aspect of real history thrown into a LUPIN farce, but it just proves that every culture is generally less than sensitive about the priorities of cultures not their own.

Though some of the comedic moments are good, Fujiko's role is confined to her complaining like a fishwife, with zero good scenes of sex or violence, while Zenigata is seen crying buckets of water over a sentimental revelation. (I've not seen all the LUPIN works, but somehow that strikes me as a peculiar take on the bulldog inspector.)

What is fairly standard is that the Lupin Gang does end up inadvertently aiding the cause of justice. However, a coda reveals that Lupin didn't just stumble into this adventure by chance, which makes for a nice end joke.