Anrakkî monkî

This Japanese movie starts as a modern b-action, when two men are about to rob a bank. During the robbery, which probably doesn´t go as they´ve planned, only one man - Yamazaki - gets away alive, and while he rushes from the scene of the crime, he accidently stabs a young woman. From this point, the story turns more into a psychological drama, in which he tries to make up with his guilty conscience in different ways. The peak of the film is a long monologue with an off screen voice, where Yamazaki tries to convince himself that it wasn´t his fault, which results in the illogical conclusion that HE is the victim in this mess.

From this point, the film again turns into b-action, not that clever or exciting.

The ending, or should i say the four endings, is really bad. He makes not one closing scene, but a total of four long scenes with fading or an object disappearing in the distance, and yet not does the movie end. Frustrating and annoying.

Japan has produced much better films than this one, but it´s not the worst either...

I already knew that I loved the works of Hiroyuki Tanaka before seeing this movie, but could still rate it unbiased because I didn't know that it was by him until the credits were showed.

It is mainly a film telling you much about life, and how it can turn on you. Its messages are very close to reality although most viewers won't experience them the way the protagonist does. But I found it very touching, especially the interesting dream monologue. I like that kind of movies, with their underground shabby feel to them, not trying to always show the greatest action scenes and effects, but letting you really get into the character(s), feel with him, pity him, then hate him, then wanting to help him again, and even think about him and his story for weeks after watching the film.

I think Shinichi Tsutsumi did a great job in portraying the character of Yamazaki, the emotions felt very real to me, and he knows how to play that helpless guy. The quiet, uneventful scenes are an important part of the movie to give you time to think, and are well realized, but still a bit too long sometimes, when you can see him walking through the city for over a minute and nothing happens, he just walks. But Sabu did great on the confusing part, never really telling you what's real or going to happen next. But although the moldy look is a part of the movie too, I think the picture quality could have been less miserable at times.

Unlucky Monkey is one of the movies you can watch and immediately know that what you see in front of you is a great piece of art, even though you can't really describe why or because of what elements, which is why I won't further try to. You will just have to watch and rate it for yourself. I suggest you look for a DVD of it somewhere. The movie has not been synchronized, only subtitled, but you'll see that this was the only smart thing to do with it.

One of the Top Asian Movies there are, if not one of the Top Worldwide.

Unlucky Monkey / Anrakkî monkî (1998) is the 3rd film by writer-director Hiroyuki Tanaka (aka 'Sabu') who, over seven features, has established himself as one of Japan's leading comedic directors, establishing a growing reputation overseas. Eschewing the over-familiar repetitions of Nippon's best known big screen humorous series (the interminable but vastly popular Tora-San), or the startlingly prodigious range of a director like Takashi Miike, Tanaka has created an immediately recognisable filmic universe of his own. Characteristically based around such concerns as the calamities of fate, the humorous treatment of Japanese social interractions, and a typically satiric treatment of Yakuza, his stories often feature surreal, casually-cruel chains of events, as characters are tossed and turned about on fate's whims and left to an uncertain future. In his world, plots are intertwined, coincidences are common, ironies rife. Add this to a firm sense of cinematic pacing (often on a low budget) with a willingness to disrupt reality to achieve artistic purpose, and you have a director whose quirky films can be addictive.

At the heart of Unlucky Monkey are the fated perambulations of small time crook Yamazaki, played by Shinichi Tsutsumi. Tsutsumi is already an established member of Sabu's repertoire of actors, having previously appeared in Postman Blues / Posutoman burusu (1997), Dangan Runner / Dangan Ranna (1996) and perhaps most memorably, in the stylish Monday (2000). Expert in expressing stunned disbelief, in the present film he spends a good deal of time running or shuffling along in monologue, with words which range from his suggestions of the true nature of bravery at the start of the film, onto pathetic self-exoneration before ending with mute foreboding and resignation.

Yamazaki's attempt to rob a bank with a colleague is bungled from the start when he discovers that the place has just been raided by similarly clad villains. After acquiring the loot by default while on the run he then, almost as accidentally, commits a stabbing. At the close of a memorable opening sequence and these two momentous turning points in his hero's fortune, Sabu fills the screen (in English) with the main title, slowly scrolling up the name. Far from being 'lucky', after acquiring such a large windfall Yamazaki will eventually wish himself dead. And, like a monkey on rope, he is obliged to go where his master - fate - leads him. Connected by cause and effect to Yamazaki's woes is the sublot featuring a trio of second-rate yakuza, also responsible for an accidental fatality, their increasingly bumbling attempts to save their skins, and those other gangsters after them. Eventually the two main threads combine in a showdown finale.

It's a film full of crazy coincidences and ironic recognitions: Yamazaki's initial dealings outside the bank and following encounter with the girl, then the peculiar chain of events by which he ends up holding her funeral urn in a hearse for instance, or the passing of the ubiquitous ski-mask from various characters; the unconscious burial of loot and yakuza chief side by side, and so on. At one point, in a scene oddly reminscent of Hitchcock's The Thirty Nine Steps, Yamazaki escapes his persecutors off the street, blundering into a resident's meeting. At the gathering he delivers an impromptu and impassioned speech about the collapse of the Japanese dream and the destruction of the environment. A lot of this is satirical and far fetched (though it does set up a memorable dream sequence). Sabu doesn't care and, ultimately a sympathetic viewer will judge, it doesn't matter. The director is not after a sensible recreation of reality. His films' narratives regularly create an outrageous momentum of their own, one in which strange logic becomes its own justification. The tableau of main characters assembled at the end of Unlucky Monkey is both thus crazy and pithy at the same time, a bizarrely formal confrontation miles away from the regular climatic shoot-outs of asian crime dramas .

There are other remarkable scenes. Standout is Yamazaki's stunned encounter with the just self-disinterred Yakuza, a figure who is seemingly just as unkillable as the hero, edging down the street. Or the memorable bar scene, where an assassin first shoots himself accidentally in the groin, then drags his dying body bloodily across the floor to try and hit his targets now cowering in the toilet. Such a moment, full of pitch black humour, anticipates the gore of Ichi the Killer / Koroshiya 1 (2001), a film in which Sabu appeared as an actor.

For those who have yet to discover Sabu, Unlucky Monkey is as good a starting point as any, although it lacks some of the polish of his other films. For those who already relish the peculiar world of such an individual writer-director then it will prove unmissable. One dreams of Sabu one day directing a major talent like the deadpan Takeshi Kitano (whose own efforts at comedy such as Getting Any?/ Minnâ-yatteruka! (1995) have been uneven), when his Keatonesque world vision would surely reach new levels. In the meantime, this little gem can be strongly recommended

I'm far from an expert on Japanese films, so my ideas here are probably sophomoric, but here's my view. The film interweaves two main story lines, each fate-driven to collide with a host of peripheral dramas or mini-universes: an environmentalist meeting, a bum in an alleyway, a cocktail waitress on her way home, a professional hit-man hallucinating in a park, a family on its way to cemetery, etc. And each intersection of the main story lines with themselves, or with the peripheral story lines correlates to some specific dramatic style or phase: tragedy, melodrama, Chaplin-esque slapstick, crime thriller, philosophic, and, in the end, Twilight Zonish (or "Return of the Mummy"-ish). Afterall, the "unlucky monkey" is all humanity.

Each flip from one style or phase to the next is transitioned - unfortunately so, to my taste - not by a fade or short black-screen, but by a very excessive stop- or slow-motion study of some ultimate moment. These transitions so wore on my patience that I pressed fast-forward to escape. But even in fast-forward, I found them annoyingly long and static.

In imposing those transitions on us poor viewers, as though infatuated with what he thought some original and arty technique, the director was frankly destructively self-indulgent and probably deaf to whatever free-minded advisers he had during editing. I can't imagine another monkey on this planet with patience enough to sit through them - unless intended as mini-intermissions for making a few phone calls, mixing some lemonade and making some popcorn before returning.

With very little editing, this could have been a really good flick. Acting, scenery and artistic direction are good, and the environmentalist meeting sequence is among the most hilarious I've ever seen.

I saw this movie a few days ago, but the memories have already kind of faded. Therefore I guess that it wasn't such a memorable experience as it seemed to be during the time of watching it.

The opening sequence, where a bag of money changes hands several times in an elegantly choreographed series of accidents is probably the best scene of the movie in my eyes.

After that, it wasn't really clear to me whether I was watching a comedy, a yakuza crime flick or a splatter film.

The movie in itself has several parallel storylines that crisscross from time to time, nothing unusual, mixed with the Japanese way of hinting at emotions very blatantly, in itself nothing unusual either, but the constant shifting between comedy, crime, philosophy and gore was a bit too inconsistent for my taste.

However, if you like Japanese movies based around the topics Yakuza, Identity-Loss, Action and Slapstick, you might wanna give it a try.

6/10