THE CROSSING A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2001 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): **
In writer/director Yoichi Higashi's THE CROSSING (BOKU NO OJISAN), Koji (Michitaka Tsutsui) is a graphics designer whose life is falling apart. His ad campaign for Sunny Advertising is not meeting with the approval of his managers. His girlfriend is going to leave him. His father has died so heavily in debt that they don't dare have a funeral, lest creditors show up demanding money. And his junior high school nephew has been arrested for holding up the post office with a kitchen butcher knife. It was a botched robbery attempt that looks like it was a plea for help.
Although handsomely filmed and respectably acted, the thin script never gets us involved. The movie drifts along without giving us much reason to care about the events. The film does make a few cute statements about the rudeness and pomposity of some cell phone users. In one scene, Koji tosses a cell phone out the window of a bus when its user becomes obnoxiously loud next to him. In another, he takes a small pad and holds it like a phone to the side of his face as he walks down a busy Tokyo street. Elevating himself to an executive position in a non-existent firm, he conducts important conversations in the same boisterous voice as those around him.
THE CROSSING runs a long 1:56. The film is in Japanese with English subtitles.
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