FIREWORKS
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Milestone Films Director: Takeshi Kitano Writer: Takeshi Kitano Cast: Takeshi Kitano, Kayoko Kishimoto, Ren Osugi, Susumu Terajima, Tetsu Watanabe
Japan may have problems accepting western-style feminism, but we all believe that it's a land of balance and harmony, with virtually no crime, with divorce unthinkable. But Takeshi Kitano upsets the popular stereotype in "Fireworks," known also by the Japanese title "Hani Bi"--which means "flower" and "fire." There are fireworks aplenty in Kitano's picture but also a great deal of gentleness, two virtues which are combined in its principal character, Kitano, who also wrote and directed. As a genre-bender, the movie can confuse viewers who can't place it in the category of police/action-adventure but also feel uncomfortable calling it a comedy or a family melodrama. It's all of these, and in a way the contrasting assets of its principal performer can be taken as a metaphor for Japan itself--a country known for the utmost in etiquette and politeness but one which is no stranger to the unspeakably cruel wartime acts.
Handsomely photographed by Hideo Yamamoto and creatively edited by appropriate flashbacks by Kitano and Yoshinori Oota, the film--which played at the 1997 New York Film Festival--centers on Yoshitaka Nishi, a tough guy toward his many enemies, a sentimental dope when considering his wife and friends. Placed at a crossroads by a series of tragedies which seem to have piled up all at once, Nishi is exceptionally violent because of feelings of guilt, a kind and tender husband to his wife when she needs him most.
Known as a top-grade police detective, Nishi snatched some time off to pay a visit to his hospitalized wife who is dying of leukemia on the very day that his partner, Horibe (Ren Osugi), took a paralyzing bullet in the back. Confined to a wheelchair, Horibe is left without a job and, perhaps even worse, his wife and child have deserted him. With little to do to occupy his time, he takes up painting and, in one of the movie's thrusts at deadpan comedy, he receives a paint set and beret from his remorseful ex-partner, Nishi. Nishi has also left the police force, has borrowed money from a loan- shark in the yakuzi (organized crime, Japanese style), and has dedicated himself to caring for his wife during her final weeks. His preoccupation is interrupted several times during the course of the story as the gangsters make incessant demands on him to pay his debt with interest. In the picture's most dramatic scene, he suddenly takes out the eye of one of the harassing hoodlums with a chopstick while putting the other hoodlum away with appropriate force. In a bloody flashback, director Kitano recreates a scene in which two detectives are shot by a criminal followed by Nishi's furious burst of gunfire to the perpetrator's head. For good measure, Nishi empties his revolver into the corpse.
Kitano's specialty is shocking the audience, which he does not only by displaying buckets of blood but by taking us off balance with Nishi's surprising sensitivity. In one scene that could be used by the Japan Tourist Office to enourage winter vacations in that country, Nishi is shown bringing laughter to his depressed wife Miyuki (Kayoko Kishimoto) in a lovely resort overlooking Mount Fuji. Nishi lights fireworks for her and helps a child they met on the beach to fly her kite.
Kitano avoids the cliches of the American-style police film by stylizing the violence, presenting it without sounds in one take and in slow motion in another. His camera does not dwell on the detached retina of the unfortunate fellow whose eye is taken out by Nishi's chopstick, but rather cuts away quickly when the ex-cop makes his jab without a split- second's warning.
Nishi is psychotic. Like many men, he wants to be left alone. When he is disturbed, he does not react the way civilized people to, but strikes out with loathing yet without fear and without a thought to the consequences of his act. When he tells the broken-down owner of a junkyard that he wants to buy a car and a flashing police light so that he can rob a bank, he means exactly what he says. (Incidentally, Kitano may have spent considerable time on the junkyard with its array of miscellaneous parts, its burly, slow-minded owner and his disturbed daughter as a metaphor for a part of Japanese society which is fraying at the edges.)
"Fireworks" does not take much time to develop its characters and explain the actions. We really have no idea why Nishi borrowed money from the yakuza or why he robs a bank with no attempt to hide his identity. If anything Kitano reinforces a stereotype that westerners may have about the inscrutability of the Japanese people, but among his primary aims is to convey a macabre atmosphere. He does this with assurance. Not Rated. Running time: 103 minutes. (C) Harvey Karten 1998
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