Living in Japan, you’re reminded with such frequency about the threat of scams, it’s easy to imagine that you’d be wise to a potential con when it went down. All the more so if you’re a local government official like Jiro Kumazawa (Seiyo Uchino), the protagonist of Shinichiro Ueda’s “Angry Squad: Civil Servant and Seven Swindlers.”
The middle-aged tax officer may be a dab hand at spotting financial impropriety, but he’s easy prey for Makoto Himuro (Masaki Okada), a suave trickster fresh out of jail. While trying to buy a secondhand car for his wife, Jiro ends up blowing his bonus on an illusory sale that Makoto orchestrates by phone while cooking lunch.
When Jiro enlists a detective pal to go after the scammer, Makoto presents him with a counteroffer: that they team up to extract ¥1 billion in unpaid taxes from a well-connected property developer, Tachibana (Yukiyoshi Ozawa). Jiro has recently suffered a professional humiliation at the hands of this corporate crook, but he soon discovers a more pressing reason to help orchestrate the latter’s comeuppance.
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