Nobody

Nicely filmed, a little uneven, "Nobody" is a good evening's entertainment. The plot is simple enough--three yuppies get into a scrap with a group of strangers in a bar, and it turns out to be much more than they bargained for. The acting is decent, and there are a few unexpected twists. Watch for the completely unbelievable (like the 10 shot revolver, and 25 shot semi-automatic handgun).

NOBODY (1999) is a fantastic piece of Japanese noir. It's about three salarymen who get in way over their heads when their innocent, drunken cheapshots p*** off three OTHER guys one night in a bar. When these three mysterious strangers, who are up to much more deviant no-goodness than even the film allows us to know, beat the living daylights out of one of our "heroes", the trio decides to return the favour in kind - only they accidentally KILL one of the other guys! The remaining two baddies then begin the systematic destruction of everything these poor schmoes hold dear, including their fast-dwindling sanity. Phaedra Video's DVD sleeve features a critic quote calling the film "A paranoid street crime freakout!" or some such, and the term more than applies here. Brooding, tense, very violent and low-key (but still pretty slick), shot largely at night with many deliberately vague moments and character motivations that keep the audience guessing right along with the besieged protagonists (who, to some degree, deserve everything they get!). I give it a 10.

Three businessmen are involved in a bar fight with three mysterious men. The three businessmen take revenge, which escalates to a murder after another. Supposedly the story is about the violence that could happen to ordinary people.

The plot has too many holes. The details were ignored in order to move the story forward. The acting was uneven. The color balance was awful even though I watched this movie in DVD. The small budget and tight schedule were apparent. The whole thing seems to be an excuse to shoot the final gun fight, and the ending was just unbelievable.

Nobody is a film with a good premise but flawed execution.

A minor set of words between two groups of business men (three men in each group), leads to one of them getting beat up. They try find the other group to get revenge, but come up empty handed until late one night they come across one of the rival men in a subway. The three friends beat him severely, so much that they run away, and begin checking the papers to see if they killed him. Soon they begin to get phone calls from the men saying that they have killed the man (though there is no evidence) and slowly they begin to get picked off.

Were these men just crazy business men? Bloodthirsty Yakuza? Crooked Cops? Unfortunately these questions and the I Know What You Did Last Summer-like plotline, dont hold up very well, and are clumsy. The deaths, the suspicion, and the finale, fall too far into b-movie territory. The script, direction, and cinematography are lackluster, and with a little fine tuning, some expanding on the cultural side, it could have been a better film. A slightly below average effort.

This little Japanese suspenser revolves around three businessmen who get into a fight with three mysterious men during a night out. It soon becomes obvious the businessmen are in over their heads and they'll have to think of ways to survive.

It's most definitely not a forgotten gem, as it has too many flaws to count as one. But it has a few decent scenes and manages suspense fairly well. Towards the end it starts to grow a bit dull, but it wakes up for a finale that pays homage to John Woo. Even then, however, it is undermined by unconvincing plot turns.

Overall, a decent watch if you're into suspense thrillers, but you're not really missing out if you skip it.