Japan / England,
2000, 113 min
Shown in 2001
CREDITS
- dir
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Takeshi Kitano
- prod
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Masayuki Mori, Jeremy Thomas
- scr
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Takeshi Kitano
- cam
-
Katsumi Yanagijima
- editor
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Takeshi Kitano
- mus
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Joe Hisaishi
- cast
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Beat Takeshi, Omar Epps, Claude Maki
- source
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US: Sony Pictures Classics, 550, Madison Avenue, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10022. Fax:(212) 833-7911 WORLD - Hanway Films, 24 Hanway Street, London W1P 9D1, England. FAX: 44-171-636-2261
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COMMENTS
Omar Epps in person.
OTHER
There is not much in the way of plot in Takeshi Kitano’s first American film; it is as formally controlled as ever, yet structurally looser than any of his previous work. Think of it as a tone poem, or a set of variations on the themes of homesickness and melancholy. Kitano, always his own greatest asset, is Yamamoto, a yakuza exiled to Los Angeles where he ends up with his drug dealer brother’s smalltime gang. Before long, the boys and their aniki (elder brother) are poised to yank the whole enchilada away from the mob. The young gangsters are awed by this silent, cunning, unflinchingly brave man with the twitching smile, and soon they’re so inspired by his example that they’re ready to follow him to his assuredly early grave. Los Angeles has never looked or felt like this before: a pretty, indifferent, almost abstract background to Yamamoto’s profound nostalgia for his homeland, which somehow finds its fullest expression in self-destruction. Brother is Kitano’s most sheerly violent film, sometimes shockingly so. But the violence is always deeply connected to loyalty, tradition and identity. Omar Epps turns in a lovely performance as Danny, with whom Yamamoto forges a bond of brotherhood as improbable as it is deep.
—Kent Jones
FACTOID #109
Though the film had won two major awards at the Berlin Film Festival, John Cassavetes’ Love Streams was pulled from the SFIFF program at the last minute by the distributor. According to Cassavetes, MGM/UA was concerned that showing Streams, which the director himself proclaimed ’a crazy film,’ at the SFIFF might hurt the film’s box office upon wider release
