If Tampopo was a restaurant story told through the lens of a samurai film, Juzo Itami's A Taxing Woman (also starring Nobuko Miyamoto, his muse) is a Noirish crime picture... about tax evasion. It's great. Miyamoto is a cool hardass as a tax inspector, but also very empathetic, going after fraudsters big and small, the bulk of the film concerned with her white whale, a hotel owner (Itami and Kurosawa veteran Tsutomu Yamazaki) who has a relationship with her akin to Columbo and one of his suspects. The driving music and exploitation elements makes it feel like a Yakuza flick, but it's also very funny, both because of the juxtaposition of styles and the character humor. Miyamoto brings a truly unusual "law enforcement" character to life, but I shave have a star off because her final victory seems more like luck than the cleverness she exhibits throughout. Then again, her FINAL final victory is an emotional, not intellectual, one. I'm certainly very glad the Japanese public reacted so well to this original piece and encouraged Itami to make a sequel.