Today's special - Sonatine. A film by Kitano Takeshi.

At first, my wife saw this movie and wanted me to see it saying it was stupid and funny. Well, I saw it and I must say I agree. A good portion of the movie is about nothing more than a group of yakuza killing time on a beach in Okinawa...then suddenly everybody dies. haha.

Anyway, here's my take on the film.

Short overview-The movie starts with a short snapshot and builds up a backgroud of a small yakuza clan, led by Murakawa (Kitano) and his close associates Katagiri (Ohsugi Ren) and Ken (Terajima Susumu). They do some yakuza stuff, like drowning a guy while hoisted to a crane-and then are told to by the boss-man to head to Okinawa to help dispute a local turf war. From the start, the set up seems suspicious, but eventually the clan heads to Okinawa and not long after it becomes clear they're there to die. After some encounters with local Okinawan yakuza, Murakawa and his crew escape to a small house on a beach and basically do nothing for some time. One of my favorite scenes is with Ken and local yakuza Ryoji (Katsumura Masanobu) just sitting in the house and Ken is reading a manga and Ryoji kept bugging him with a toy, like spreading the dolls legs and saying, "Do me" and "Chuu" and kissing Ken. It's extremely stupid, but incredibly hilarious. Then they do other things like shoot fireworks at each other, but Murakawa busts out his gun and starts shooting real bullets at them. Again, stupid, but funny. Meanwhile, Murakawa witnesses some attempted rape of a local woman and randomly 'saves' her by shooting the guy in the belly. The girl joins the crew on the beach and their life of benelity. Well, not to be long-winded, but eventually the yakuza do get back to work when a supposed truce is being reached and when they go to town to find out what's going on, it becomes apparent again that everything is a setup. More of Murakawa's men die (including Ken shot in the head by an assassin at the beach) and finally Murakawa himself takes on the whole gang with an M-4. Before the last shootout, Ryoji leaves Murakawa with a simple line, "Bring it back with gas", a similar line said before in the movie. Well, a spoiler, but basically everyone dies. After killing the whole gang, Murakawa realizes the futility in his continuation in the yakuza and shoots himself in the head along a dirt road. The End.

My take-This movie was very interesting in the fact that it was a mobster movie that was not very mobster-ish at all. Instead of scene after scene of death and killings, you get grown men acting like children on a beach for about 30-40 minutes during the heart of the movie. Some of my favorite parts had absolutely nothing to do with the plot, but the extreme boredom the men went through while waiting to see what happened. Aside from the doll scene and fireworks scene, another funny part was when Murakawa and another yakuza setup a number of trapholes in the beach and then lured Ken, Ryoji and Katagiri into them. It's a kind of boredom that one can imagine from being trapped in such a place with nothing better to do. Last, but not least, was an extremely funny scene where Ryoji and Ken act out a paper-sumo match after playing with real paper-sumo. The scene starts off like it would be a real sumo match and everyone going through the steps (acting like they're going to start, stopping, slowly walking away, grabbing 'sand' and throwing in the ring), but then Ryoji and Ken setup in the ring and Murakawa and others step outside and start pounding the ground to imitate the actions of a paper-sumo and Ryoji and Ken continue to bounce up and down and around the ring. Again, stupid hilarity.

Well, my verdict for this, my first ameblo movie review, is a solid 8.5 'boshi' out of 10...'boshi' of course being 'hoshi', but I like hats better than stars. It blends surprising elements into a mob movie without being a mob movie at all which is something American movies have yet to do. Definitely a recommendation for someone who wants to see something different (if not incredibly stupid).

Enjoy and Excelsior!

Quotes of the day-

"No matter how good you are at something there's always about a million people better than you."-Homer Simpson

"Trying is the first step towards failure."-Homer Simpson

This is my first entry blog on ameblo.

I have a son who was born at the end of August.

He is so cute, isn't he?

Please enjoy a few of his pics!