Rating: B+
Dir: Takeshi Kitano
Star: Takeshi Kitano, Tadanobu Asano, Nao Ômori, Hakuryû
I have to admit, my first thought was, “He’s still alive? And making films?” Kitano is not actually that old, compared to Clint Eastwood, say: Takeshi turned 78 in January. But it feels like he has been playing old guys for about forty years. Here, it’s mob hitman Nezumi, a.k.a. “Mr Mouse”, whose life revolves entirely around his work. He makes Leon the Professional look like a wild and crazy guy. But after he gets arrested by cops Inoue (Asano) and Fukuda (Ômori), he is turned, and order to infiltrate a group of drug dealers. In other words, it’s the kind of thing Kitano has done for decades, and after thirty-five minutes, you have a well-crafted and solid, albeit unoriginal, gangster drama.
Then, however… You get the most unexpected side-step since One Cut of the Dead. After a brief intermission, it repeats – except, this time re-imagined as an absurdist comedy. For example, Nezumi is now a bumbling idiot, and the cops interrogate him by torturing each other. It’s a wonderful parody of the yakuza genre of cinema. and shows Kitano’s talent for deadpan comedy, familiar to those who’ve seen his fabulous portrayal of Vic Romano in American series MXC, subsequently dubbed for release in Japan as Takeshi’s Castle. Considering it’s the kind of role for which Kitano is best-known, it might be a case of biting the hand that feeds. Except, at his age, I suspect he doesn’t give a damn, and more power to him for that.
It barely runs more than a hour, even with a couple of explicitly labelled running-time fillers, where the film stops, and is replaced by a series of comments, as if it were live-streaming on YouTube. [In a touching display of global unison, Internet commenters in Japan are clearly just as idiotic as anywhere else] But I’m fine with this. A film should be the length it needs to be and, again, Kitano does what he wants. It’s the contrast between the two halves which is glorious, the comic restagings pin-pricking the conventions of the genre with precision. Yet is also operates as broad comedy, and reminded me of The Naked Gun or The Pink Panther, with its fondness for slapstick, and making its hero the joke.
Witness, say, the identity parade, which in its comedic incarnation (top), sees Nezumi matched against a guy in a wheelchair, and a schoolgirl. Yet as well as being funny, it’s a sly dig at the stacked nature of the Japanese criminal justice system, where arrest largely equals guilt. It feels like the film operates on multiple levels, and I suspect some of them may be lost on Western viewers, developing from elements of Japanese society that are not known here. I’m fine with this, because more than enough does translate, demonstrating the common culture that unites us, in a way which is almost heartwarming. Old people falling down is funny everywhere, it appears. Can confirm: am old.