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Battles Without Honor and Humanity
仁義なき戦い
1973 · Film · 99 min
Directed by Kinji Fukasaku
In the teeming black markets of postwar Japan, Shozo Hirono and his buddies find themselves in a new war between factious and ambitious yakuza.
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I suspect this is just a matter of style. Current style somewhat favours fast-paced action and pacing. But one can easily find counter-examples.
There are contemporary productions that are absolutely plodding -- the recent miniseries The English [1] is full of over-long shots of oblique plaintive faces looking out over the prairies. I was twiddling my thumbs at times. Admittedly, it is a contemporary Western, which is prone to that style, and it's a deliberate effect. The same kind of tension-building as in Alien, really. It's not to everyone's taste.
And there are older films that feel very fast-paced and, well, modern -- I recently watched an old Japanese yakuza film, Battles Without Honour and Humanity [2], released in 1973 now 50 years ago, and it opens with a scene cut every 20 seconds or so, just action, action, action and it never lets up. Felt like watching something released a few years ago.
Tastes come and go, but no style ever fully goes away.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_English_(TV_series)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_Without_Honor_and_Humanity_(film)