Anrakkî monkî

we are all just unlucky monkeys, bouncing from one strange situation into another. and that´s just what happens in the movie, sabu (monday) takes us on an bizarre tour de force, starting with a bank-robbery... go watch this movie, if possible. i think you won´t be disappointed.

I find this film fascinating for several reasons.Its the only Sabu film with social conscience,for one.Then,its the film where the human is shown from the darkest point of view,without the unnecessary violence.There is some violence,but its not graphic nor without reason. The dream scene is one of the deepest and best I have seen and it stuck inside me as well as the ending(and I hope it did with others too).

The ending is a bit hard to understand for some.Why does the dead man rise?Why does Tsutsumi's character so desperately try to end his life?Maybe because he has seen more than others and knows that this society is going towards the end.Its disturbing I know and thats why this film is so precious to me.Sabu cared,thats why he made it.This is not just another of his mad stories with weird plots and a sad ending.

The ending I don't find really sad and thats another reason why I love it.He found relief.What I found sad and heavy to watch is the scene where he wanders through the filthy streets and knows that he is truly lost.The beginning gives you an insight to why he really is lost.He tried to commit that robbery because it was a chance for him to get a better life.Maybe he wanted to move away from all that.And then found himself stuck right in the middle of it all.Its the last tale of human hell and the desperate road to redemption.Sabu,you really are a master. Shinichi Tsutsumi became my favorite actor after this film.He really is a special talent and a gift to Japan's film industry.I hope he will have a long and fruitful career.Without him,this film wouldn't be what it is,a Dante-ish tour de force.

This is basically imitation Tarantino. So, if you like that kind of thing, you might want to sit through this. There are, in fact, a couple of laugh-out-loud moments that arise from very dark situations. But, otherwise, very slow moving - lots of filler because he doesn't have enough story to fill two hours - and no strong links to reality. This is allegory all the way, although I'm not sure what the point of it might be. One difference from Tarantino: the main character does feel an acute sense of remorse and that becomes a major thread near the end. Recommended only if you're intensely interested in modern cinema from Japan.

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

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...