quinolas

Story based on the series of the untidy and always scratching detective Kindaichi Yousuke written by the revered master of suspense Yokomizo Seishi. 400 hundred years ago the inhabitants of the village of Yatsuhaka murdered 8 samurai rebels, whom they were actually helping to hide away, afraid of what the Shogunate would do to them. Before dying one the samurai puts a curse on the village. Strange things start to happen so the villagers decided to erect 8 graves for the murdered samurai to appease their anger. Then four hundred years later the head of Tajimi family and head of the village goes mad and starts killing almost everyone in the village. 25 years later his eldest son is poisoned. Kindaichi Yousuke detective is hired by the family?s lawyer as everyone in the village believes is the curse of the samurai again. The film looks great, fantastic dark and creepy interior shots in stunning locations. Filmed with the Ichikawa usual panache as the grained black & white shots at the beginning mixed with gushes of gaudy red blood. The cast is quite interesting. It includes two of my favourite Japanese actors: Renji Ishibashi and Ittoku Kishibe and some other familiar faces such as Kyôko Kishida (Woman of the Dunes) or Hisako Manda miss Japan 1978 and now NHK morning talk show presenter. But they don?t save the film from being quite dull and slow going; there is lack of tension and mystery. Etsushi Toyokawa?s unconvincing performance of the unkempt detective (he is far too pretty and cool) doesn?t help either. In fact the film looks like some sort of family entertainment movie with the exception of the extremely gory slaughter of the villagers worth of the Lone Wolf and Cub series, a fine touch from Ichikawa in a film which quite below his standard.

Funny but rather forgettable film centred in the lives of 4 hired killers. We know about their domestic habits, their shared platonic love, their difficulties in carrying a normal life when not working and also their difficulties in doing their job... sometimes... sometimes they would do their job for love rather than money .... but what is new?. It is quite interesting how this format (mix of comedy and violence featuring similar characters such as gangsters & hitmen and so on) has shifted from one side of the globe to another. The starting point being possibly USA with Tarantino & co, then followed UK with Ritchie & co and some appearances in Spain (Airbag and so on) and France (Doberman...). The Korean audience (specially the young one) loved it. You know is their own language, own charismatic actors and drawing on their own cultural themes. Maybe for foreign audiences like me much will get lost in the subtitles and some cultural subtleties unnoticed. But I've got to say I had enough of these sort films so it's just come a bit too late for me to fully appreciate. Don't misunderstand me... it's quite entertaining... Something that did picked up just as a curiosity, and after seeing quite a lot of South Korean films recently, is how similar in many aspects Korean and Japanese culture are, they like or not. Here I am talking about the joke on blood types.

During a stakeout a corrupt cop, under investigation by Internal Affairs, has his face slashed by a mysterious character wearing a raincoat. A connection is made between a brutally murdered elderly couple not far away from the previous incident and this rain coated man. The cop believes the couple's son might have involved in the murder and decides to investigate him.

So you have here two characters in supposedly respectable occupations (one a cop, the other a fund manager) who ain't angels. This is more obvious in the cop's physical appearance, his drug dealing and his sharing a hot bath with Korean sort of yakuza, even though the introduction of the manager character played by Lee Sung-jae (a familiar face now in the West starring in films such as Attack the Gas Station, Barking Dogs Never Bite & Art Museum by the Zoo) is quite revealing too. Masturbating and swearing in the shower in an interesting shot that completely isolates him, then we see him sharing a breakfast and playing with his wife and son in the warmth of a comfortable house. I have to say that the first 20 minutes of the film are rather interesting because the character's ambiguity still play an important role. Then all falls apart simply because of the cop's sort of rediscovery of his duty after seeing the dead bodies of the elderly couple (or is it he is only jealous at the manager's lifestyle). It all becomes a bit of a farce that w e're supposed to take seriously as the film has to make serious compromises after such a bleak beginning. "Nobody does something like that to somebody's parent without any motive" he says "for me they are public enemies". I hate to judge films by comparing them to others but Public Enemy has a too much of a Dirty Harry influence (this really put me off), a too cliché supportive boss, who is got to deal with the more bureacratic and politically correct higher hierarchies of the police department, and a array of weird characters, all criminals, that helps the cop to catch his so-called Public Enemy. The cop's trademark speech when confronting criminals really got on my nerves and not many in the audience found it funny anyway.