I have avoided watching this movie for a little while now, I have to admit. Well I tell a lie, I did skim through, and found it was pretty much Kitano making a movie in the US, which meant pretty much English Dialogue, with English speaking actors. I told myself, Jackie Chan is shit now, Jet Li is poo now, Donnie Yen…let’s not start on him yet, he hasn’t really had many parts as of yet. So I thought, Kitano doing a movie in the US?

How wrong could I be? Averagely wrong is the precise answer.
Kitano is well known by his fans as someone who has a keen interest in expressing realistic, controlled but graphic violence.

This movie had a very very dark sense of humour, much like previous Kitano flicks. Kitano doesn’t have much dialogue in this, but what he has to say is critical to understanding his character, his character’s development and the influence of his character.

This is a gangster movie – but you won’t have seen anything like this before. It’s an American gangster movie essentially, but written, directed and produced by a Japanese guy with a pretty average grasp of English, but a talent for making some exceptional movies.

You’ll see some of Kitano’s regular actors take part in this movie. For those who don’t understand, if you watch most of his movies in which Kitano stars in (which is most!) he has a set of regular actors he uses to portray characters. It’s not something you’ll see happen in the West, or anywhere else for that matter. With the expectation of perhaps Kurosawa using the likes of Mifune in his flicks. The only western example I can think of is the relationship of Burton and Depp – who are an absolute masterstroke together. And so it is with Kitano and his regulars.

It’s a very down to Earth movie. There’s nothing spectacular in the effects, soundtrack , even the movie looks to have been shot on the cheap

The movie uses some interesting ideas in the development of the film. As Kitano ’s gang grows bigger so do their dwellings. Kitano is a Yakuza member in Tokyo, who, after his Boss is killed, has the choice to join with the rival gang. But in doing so he would have to give up the “name” of his leader and accept a new one. He refuses to do so, however, his fellow “brothers” decide to betray the name of their dead leader and defect to the rival gang.

This is all done rather casually – and formally, with a few typical rites of passage you would expect. But Kitano refuses to join…

So it is, that after his friends join, the one person he considered a friend that defected is ordered to kill Kitano. Instead he begs Kitano to leave Japan.

Kitano agrees and moves to America, where his kid brother lives, whom he sent to America to study. Instead his brother has been living his life out by pushing drugs with some other “hoods”.

Upon Kitano’s arrival their world will change forever. They begin by living in a small ground floor room. Big enough for them all to be in, but not much else. As Kitano decides to rebuild his life by being a gangster in America, he decides to live in that small room. As the movie grows, and his gang grows, the one room becomes another floor of the building, and so on – until the entire building is theirs.

The movie does have an epicness about it. It’s not the epicness, or the finesse of The Godfather. Nor does it have the glitz, the glamour or the classy soundtrack of Goodfellas or Casino. So how can it be epic? At 113 minutes surely not? Well….it feels like an Epic. The movie seems longer than it actually is, as you become absorbed by this transformation of the characters. They are flawed, which makes them human. If they go into a gun fight, they aren’t sure if they’ll make it alive – and the audience (in this case me) feels the same.

In the movies mentioned, you find most of these characters seem to get away with everything, being above the law, almost invincible – of course it isn’t until the end they get their just deserts. In this movie however, you see as they grow, and the rate at which they grow, the decisions they make – you feel it will end badly, you know the mistakes they’ve made, and the characters are aware of the mistakes they made, so they know they’re gonna die – but you don’t know who will survive. It’s a very surreal feeling, to know what will happen in the end, but not knowing keeps you focused.

And what we have here is one long story – about Kitano in America, and a smaller, almost irrelevant you think, but an important story developing Japan.

The mix of characters is quite incredible – it;s not often you see a movie with lead characters that have broken English, followed by those not even on the same level in ability (character wise). This is the most odd bunch of killers you’ll see, they don’t’ really know how to kill. They’re not really sure how to even use a gun, but with Kitano’s guidance they grow. It’s a rag tag army pretty much.

It’s a very down to Earth movie. There’s nothing spectacular in the effects, soundtrack , even the movie looks to have been shot on the cheap – but perhaps this was due to the script. Filmfour did sponsor this movie. Whatever the case, it’s shot very nicely with the limited locales used. The characters are so interesting, even though some aren’t realistic, the script has a certain predictability about it – but only in that you know what Kitano will start doing, and you know how it might end. Everything else in between is the movie, which you don’t know much of.

The characters are stereotyped, but then that would be expected from every gangster movie I’ve seen – including Kubrick’s The Killing released way back when.

It’s quite an entertaining movie, after I had some problems running my machine, I was determined to get it working to finish watching the movie! It kept my interest, the story developed, and ended as predicted, but well enough. And it has Kitano’s trademark dark humour in a lot of the movie. There is an underlining theme to this movie about loyalty which is shown through the characters themselves.

The only issue I had with the DVD was that it’s was done a bit poorly – the picture is fine. The sound is great (DTS 5.1), but the subtitles. Well they have been designed sloppily. You can have either English subs, or Chinese subs….throughout. Even during the English speaking parts! That was probably the only thing that annoyed me.

It has traditional features: chapter selection; language and subs selection. It also has the trailer, and some interesting tid bits about the production of the movie I think….I’m not too keen on any DVD features ever – because you don’t really look at em more than once. Except the Aki thing on FFSA…er…

Verdict: A good Kitano flick, if not one of the better ones.