SHERDOG MOVIE CLUB: Week 196 - Hana-Bi (1997)

There are Free Clinics in the US? Man I feel ripped off! My dad had to pay like 30 bucks the last time he visited the Doctors! That's probably the most expensive health care in the world!;)

Humor, especially sarcasm doesn't always translate well through text. The Free Clinic is an American joke about sexually transmitted diseases...

I was accusing you of pissing lava.
 
This was a nice movie. Never seen one exactly like it,

Adding chickenluver to my list of people who haven't seen Kaurismäki.:sniper:

I really liked the way that the details of the police work at the start was never explored really at all. I was a little confused at first when the narrative jumped forward to the aftermath of the shoot out which left one of the cops dead

It is kind of interesting how only the first 1/3 is non-standard in its narration and then we get a normal timeline -- as if Kitano's character is in some emotional maelstrom of traumatic memories for that previous and then focuses on the present when he has a plan and knows what to do.

It does make me feel rather old than Kitano has dropped so much from cultural relevance, he was never exactly a household name in the west outside of the gameshow but was arguably the entomb of cool for a few years either side of the millennium. I spose you could argue it goes rather hand in hand with Japanese pop culture as a whole losing relevance in the west since then with anime not having the pull of the Ghibli/Kon releases or Akira, Ghost in the Shell, etc. You could say I spose part of that isn't just decline(honestly I'v not seen a Beat film since Zatoichi in 2003 so that's hard to know) but that the influence of his work has become so ubiquitous, Ryan Gosling's persona especially for stuff like Drive, Blade Runner and some of the comedy as well I think owes a lot to Takashi and the artier end of Korean cinema also I think owes a good deal to him.

Kitano's style doesn't really "fit" into the larger Jap-wave that ran rampant in the 90's and 00's. I mean, Anime and stuff like that tends to be more ostentatiously cool and flashy -- giant robots fighting with katanas kind off stuff -- as opposed to the arthouse stuff that Kitano is doing. It doesn't really seem like he could piggy-back off it very naturally.

Nishi decides to rob a bank because he owes Pride Fighting Championship a lot of money, excuse me, the Yakuza

<45>

Could be due to the fact I was watching on my phone

I used to sit on a train for 2 hours each day just to commute to work.

It was there where I learned the fine art of watching movies on my phone. I managed to watch 1 film a-day just on those train-rides. It's an underrated medium.:cool:

Really to me the film almost feels like a reaction to his earlier career

He pretty much says so on his IMDB-quotes page:

...[Violent Cop] was shot a long time ago, when I didn't knew how to make a film. At least now, I am beginning to grasp what filmmaking is all about, gradually, so I watched it again the other day on video, so that I could comment on it during the interview, as I had forgotten almost everything about it. Frankly, I couldn't bear to watch it. It's like being forced to watch yourself when you were a kid. I felt so embarrassed.
 
Also, why do we need to watch Detective Horibe in so many scenes. This movie is not about Detective Horibe.
I think Horibe was representative of Kitano himself. As per wiki: In August 1994, Kitano was involved in a motorscooter accident and suffered injuries that caused partial paralysis of the right-side of his face. As reported by Dan Edwards, Kitano later said that the accident was an "unconscious suicide attempt".

All of the paintings seen in the film were done by Kitano while recovering. So I guess both Horibe's suicidal depression and his finding of a creative outlet came from Kitano's own experiences.
Everyone who is using "arthouse" to describe this movie should actually be using the words "Aki Kaurismäki but with violence".
Adding chickenluver to my list of people who haven't seen Kaurismäki
Looking at this guy's titles I assumed most of them were absurdist comedies.
But overall, I think Takeshi nailed the notes better in something like the Bank Robbery scene, where there is no violence and all you have is the tensity in peoples faces as they're watching him do it wordlessly. It seemed more in harmony with the film.
Forgot to mention the bank robbery, that was probably my favorite individual scene.

I did also like the stylistic violence when he attacked the yakuza guys in the bar, chopsticks to the eye, etc. and at the end when block the hammer of the gun with his finger.
Frankly, I couldn't bear to watch it. It's like being forced to watch yourself when you were a kid. I felt so embarrassed.
That's hilarious.
 
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