HANI-BI |
| CREDITS: Director: Takeshi Kitano. Cast: Beat Takeshi, Kayoko Kishimoto, Ren Osugi,
Susumo Teralima, Tetsu Watnabe, Makoto Ashikawa & Yuko Daike. Japan 1997. INTRODUCTION: Leaving behind his hit TV Comedy show Takeshi makes his seventh filmic outing as both writer, director and under the apt pseudonym "Beat" star. SYNOPSIS: Veteran Tokyo police officer Yashitaka Nishi (Takeshi), heavily in debt to the Yakuza and unable to support his dying wife, is driven to the brink of despair, as if he's not there already, when a stakeout goes wrong. REVIEW: Owing a lot stylistically to QT, Takeshi uses the all too familiar heist gone awry plot, the visceral violence and the witty dialogue, but somehow manages to transcend the genre. Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival Takeshi's masterpiece out QTs QT, oozing violence and cool in equal parts from every orifice. Takeshi puts in a brilliant taciturn turn as Nishi, it's hard to imagine this guy's a comic in Japan, then again maybe not. Osugi is brilliant, if underused as Nishi's partner Horibe, as is Kishimoto as Nishi's wife, while Teralima steals the show as Nakomura. As if acting, writing and starring in the film were not enough for Auteur extraordinaire Takeshi he also works his own paintings into the plot, and like everything else he does they too are excellent. Sickening isn't it? Blending traditional Japanese art with elements of surrealism, expressionism and, in one memorable painting, pre-Raphaelite art he manages to show the emotions Nishi seems unable to. Another excellent contribution to Japan's emerging strand of ultra-violent cinema. Mutt's Rating: **** |