Takeshi Kitano arrived on the filmmaking scene in Japan with his film "Violent Cop". He had been an actor and a comedian and... Really just a general purpose renaissance man up until that point. He was cast in the comedy action film Violent Cop as a supporting character, but when the director dropped out, he took the reins of the film as the new director and rewrote the entire script into a sort of Dirty Harry story about a sociopath detective who will literally stop at nothing to kill the bad guy. Kikujiro is a much different film than that one, and certainly belongs on your must download internet movies queue.
Kikujiro is really something different, or was at the time, for Kitano. He had generally been creating violent gangster films about the Yakuza. He first moved away from that genre with a film about surfers. When asked why his new movie had no yakuza in it, he said "Well you know yakuza have to chop off their fingers on their left hand when they disobey orders. And surfers have to paddle their boards out to sea. If a yakuza tried to surf, he would only paddle in circles." This sense of humor defines all of his work, including the sentimental, touching tale told in Kikujiro.
Kitano's career has had a lot of twists and turns. He began as an emcee of a nightclub. When the comedian there got sick, he took over as comic for the night, and he was a huge star on the comedy scene for a number of years.
Eventually he became a popular TV show host, and even got a chance to make his own video game with Takeshi's Challenge. This game was really more of a torture device than anything, with ridiculous challenges such as demanding that the player hit a button thousands of times to progress, or sing into a microphone plugged into the Nintendo for an hour straight. The game was made, as the title screen declares, by "a man who hates video games." Well, the game certainly hates the player.
Kitano's odd sense of humor comes through very well in this movie. Kitano plays Kikujiro, an old man who fits the lovable loser archetype. He escorts a young boy across Japan to meet his estranged mother. He winds up blowing all their money at the tracks, thinking the kid is some kind of psychic after predicting three race winners in a row.
Later, Kitano is forced to beg for food for himself and the boy. He gets two sandwiches, hides one, and tells the boy "You eat, I don't need food right now". He then hides around the corner to eat his own sandwich. It's a funny scene, showing that he may be a lovable loser, but he really wants the child's respect and isn't afraid of lying to get it!
The movie is, again, very sweet. Watching the old man and the young boy bond is moving and touching, and within one another, the two find their own definition of the word family.
Sonatine is the Kitano film that is most well known in the US, but Kikujiro is without a doubt one of his very best.
Kikujiro is really something different, or was at the time, for Kitano. He had generally been creating violent gangster films about the Yakuza. He first moved away from that genre with a film about surfers. When asked why his new movie had no yakuza in it, he said "Well you know yakuza have to chop off their fingers on their left hand when they disobey orders. And surfers have to paddle their boards out to sea. If a yakuza tried to surf, he would only paddle in circles." This sense of humor defines all of his work, including the sentimental, touching tale told in Kikujiro.
Kitano's career has had a lot of twists and turns. He began as an emcee of a nightclub. When the comedian there got sick, he took over as comic for the night, and he was a huge star on the comedy scene for a number of years.
Eventually he became a popular TV show host, and even got a chance to make his own video game with Takeshi's Challenge. This game was really more of a torture device than anything, with ridiculous challenges such as demanding that the player hit a button thousands of times to progress, or sing into a microphone plugged into the Nintendo for an hour straight. The game was made, as the title screen declares, by "a man who hates video games." Well, the game certainly hates the player.
Kitano's odd sense of humor comes through very well in this movie. Kitano plays Kikujiro, an old man who fits the lovable loser archetype. He escorts a young boy across Japan to meet his estranged mother. He winds up blowing all their money at the tracks, thinking the kid is some kind of psychic after predicting three race winners in a row.
Later, Kitano is forced to beg for food for himself and the boy. He gets two sandwiches, hides one, and tells the boy "You eat, I don't need food right now". He then hides around the corner to eat his own sandwich. It's a funny scene, showing that he may be a lovable loser, but he really wants the child's respect and isn't afraid of lying to get it!
The movie is, again, very sweet. Watching the old man and the young boy bond is moving and touching, and within one another, the two find their own definition of the word family.
Sonatine is the Kitano film that is most well known in the US, but Kikujiro is without a doubt one of his very best.
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