POSTMAN BLUES (Posutoman Burusu) (director/writer: Sabu; cinematographer: Shuji Kuriyama; editor: Shuichi Kakesu; cast: Shinichi Tsutsumi (Ryuichi Sawaki), Osugi Ren (Hit Man Joe), Keisuke Horibe (Noguchi), Toyama Kyoko (Kyoko), Susumu Terajima (Detective Maeda), Tomoro Taguchi (Profiler), Shimizu Hiroshi (Detective Domon); Runtime: 110; 1997-Japan)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
This parody of other gangster films suffers from a bad case of mindless imitation and hapless comedy that might be funny to someone in Japan, but does not have a universal appeal. It is a parody of how the yakuza is portrayed in Kitano films. It also pays homage to many other gangster films from around the world, including France's "Diva." It tries to take dramatic situations that occurred in those films and apply them out of context here, by poking fun at the hit man's mystique.
What the director Sabu is trying to do becomes apparent in one of the early scenes, where a postman Sawaki (Tsutsumi ) goes to deliver mail to his old high school friend Noguchi (Horibe), someone he hasn't seen for years. Noguchi has become a low-level yakuza with dreams of becoming infamous, expressing exhilaration for the work he has chosen to do, even if he couldn't possibly be overjoyed at the present since he just cut off his pinky to give to his yakuza boss for screwing up a drug deal. Sawaki when asked about his work, just feels his job is dull. Noguchi asks him, "Does your heart ever thump with excitement like it did when you were a kid?"
The police have Noguchi under surveillance and since the postman went into the yakuza's apartment, they assume he is working for the gangster as a messenger and thereby put a tail on him. The film will turn into an absurd action comedy of mistaken identity, as Sawaki is taken for a drug-runner, then when he delivers mail in a hospital and talks with a cancer victim, Hit Man Joe (Ren), the police think he is involved in an insurance scam, then they think he a terrorist bomber because he is always delivering packages, and finally, they bring in a criminal profiler, and Sawaki is classified as being a serial homicidal psychopath. By searching his apartment and finding a severed finger there, which Sawaki took by mistake from his friend's apartment, and then following him to meet Noguchi, who has to cut off another to please his boss -- the cops from this task force surveillance team become convinced that he is a serial killer connected with the Minato Gang. The cops are shown to be bumbling idiots, while the yakuzas are clichés of how they appear in films. The fun in the film is mainly for film buffs, who will spot a wide variety of gangster films being used as a source for the levity here.
A conventional soap opera romance is thrown into the mix, as the kindly mailman not only meets Hit Man Joe at the hospital but a beautiful young lady called Kyoto, who has a terminal case of cancer. The two dream that they can find bliss together as lovers. While Hit Man Joe dreams that he can win a hit man Killer of Killers competition, but he is worried they will disqualify him for health reasons.
The film's conclusion is a mixture of madcap comedy and an attempt to give meaning to all the lives of the dreamers who befriended Sawaki. The postman is racing on his bike to meet Kyoto at the hospital, while the special task force under detective Domon's direction have high-tech computer graphics to follow the suspect and roadblocks in place to detain the mailman, and are poised to shoot Sawaki first and ask questions later. Hit Man Joe and Noguchi are shown to have more feeling than the police and go by bike to aid their unsuspecting friend from the danger he is in, trying to tell the police they got the wrong man. Sabu reveals his pessimistic opinion of society, by having the innocent postman put through such an ordeal over nothing.
Humor is subjective, you can't convince anyone that something was funny when they aren't laughing. I didn't laugh at what I was seeing, though I found the film to be stylish, shot in an outpouring of mellow brown and blue-gray shades.
REVIEWED ON 10/24/2000 GRADE: C-
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
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