MOVIE REVIEW: BOILING POINT (1990)

Written and directed by Takeshi Kitano 

Produced by Kazuyoshi Okuyama

Cinematography by Katsumi  Yanagishima 

Edited by Toshio Taniguchi 

Starring 

Yurei Yanagi as Masaki

Beat Takeshi as Uehara

. . .

"You should've swung your bat at least once. "

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker. 

Boiling Point is about a man who struggles to live up to the expectations of being a vengeful protagonist in a violent, harrowing crime movie. 

But we start things off in Act One real casual, kinda goofy, kinda like The Sandlot but with adults . . .

Masaki is a minor league baseball player who struggles to hit the ball. He doesn't really want to be at practice. He hides in the baseball field's restroom pretending to take lengthy shits in order to avoid the scorn of his teammates. Maybe he's constipated. Stress can do that to you. After getting struck out for the umpteenth time, Masaki goes off to sit by his lonesome in some tall grass. 

We find out that Masaki works at a gas station. Pumping gas. Wiping down windshields. Vacuuming interiors. Dumping ashtrays. Washing mud off tires. He has no zeal for this job, and can barely be bothered to show up on time.

Is Masaki depressed? Is he dissatisfied with his rut in life? He seems to feel trapped. 

One day, a gangster rolls into the gas station expecting full service only to be left waiting for an unreasonable amount of time by Masaki, who is supposed to be on duty as an attendant. The gangster lashes out with verbal abuse and violence. Masaki punches the gangster. This is the fatal mistake. The gangster has a whole gang of goons ready to lean on the gas station. Which they do. The rest of this film follows Masaki in his winding, often half-assed, quest for vengeance. 

Now, Masaki has the right idea. That yakuza guy was an asshole, and yakuza, generally, are crooks and exploiters, so there's no reason not to fight back . . .

. . . except for the stark reality that everyone else at the gas station is afraid to stand up to the gangsters, and prefer the safety of apology, appeasement, and self-abasement.

Also, Masaki isn't really a tough guy. Although he exists within a film with genre elements-gangster intrigues, vigilante justice, three act structure-Masaki is closer to being a person from real life than a genre protagonist. He's justifiably outraged, but he’s not someone with a capacity for violence. Masaki has no military training, nor is he inherently attracted to bloodshed. The guy is barely able to maintain normal conversations-perhaps due to shyness or social anxiety-let alone crack one-liners as he slaughters bad guys. In movie protagonist terms, Masaki is a loser. In real life terms, Masaki is just trying to get by like billions of other people on the planet. 

This is Masaki's dilemma: can he-a Real Life Person-survive ordeals that usually call for a Violent Movie Protagonist? 

Well . . .

Masaki and one of his baseball bros decide to leave the sticks for the big city of Okinawa. The plan is to purchase illegal firearms so they can go shoot up the bogus real estate offices where the yakuza bullies hold court. Masaki and his friend don't divulge specifics to We the Audience of how they hope to buy guns which are severely restricted by law in Japan. It seems like a bit of a fishing expedition. Big cities are places of crime and guns. Want a gun? Go to the big city! I also wasn't clear if we're just supposed to be aware that it's common knowledge that you can purchase firearms from American military personnel stationed in Okinawa. This was a surprise to me, in any case.

But before Masaki and his bro can buy the illegal guns, they need a hookup. This hookup is a gangster named Uehara. Uehara is in big trouble with his boss for spending money recklessly, and drinking to excess. Uehara is also a walking timebomb who revels in torture, rape, and murder, but the boss is just like, "The money, Lebowski!"

Uehara hijacks the Second Act. Masaki and his bro go out 'partying' with Uehara and his sworn bro . . . and it's a wonder any of them survive. Complete tonal shift. The slackery vibe of Act One is gone, and we are on a nonstop death trip with the frightful demon beast that is Uehara. The situations of Act One induced a certain anxiety. Uehara's pitiless, stony gaze may induce panic in some viewers who stay through Act Two. 

Now, Uehara's problem is that he's too good at being a Violent Movie Protagonist. Uehara makes Charles Bronson look like Mr. Belvedere. Uehara makes Frank Booth-the Dennis Hopper villain from Blue Velvet-look like Tickle Me Elmo. Uehara makes Chuck Norris look like a Teletubby. Hell, Uehara makes John Wick look like Keanu Reeves. 

Uehara has no problem making the necessary moves to buy military grade hardware from an American soldier. Uehara has no hesitation when it comes to obliterating his own boss and those who stand with the boss. Uehara cares not for any innocent people who get caught in the crossfire. Hey, disregard for civilian deaths is kinda baked-in to any form of warfare including gang warfare. But Uehara also seems to relish his own destruction which is where the guy kinda seals his doom. In a completely amoral universe, you can live a life of total depravity, but if your appetite for destruction consumes even your own life . . . 

. . . well . . .

. . . guess that means Masaki's carrying the baton for Act Three. 

I suppose it's a spoiler to say that Masaki survives as long as he does. Although after his ordeal with Uehara, he might wish he had been killed with the others massacred in Okinawa. 

Don't get me wrong. My heart is with Masaki on this one. But this is a guy who's barely equipped to hold down his gas station job let alone confront the heart of madness that drives Boiling Point to its jaw-dropping climax. Yes, there is a helluva payoff to this elliptical, confounding, and punitive film experience. The pettiness, stupidity, and sadism that suffuse the asinine conflicts demand some spectacle of mayhem, I suppose. We begin in a world without any moral order, and Masaki, in his blundering, imposes . . . something . . . upon this mess-

-unless he doesn't. 

The end returns us to the baseball field's restroom, wherein Masaki lingers over his phantom bowel movement. Was it all a B-Movie phantasia in the mind of an anxiety-ridden minor leaguer? Did Masaki carry over his Save Data into New Game+? Does Masaki-at long last-get to drop a fat shit? 

Maybe we need a cartoon owl to start licking on some lollipops to find out for sure.

Boiling Point fucks with you like that. 

MOVIE REVIEW: VIOLENT COP (1989)

 Directed by Takeshi Kitano 

Written by Misushi Nozawa and Takeshi Kitano 

Cinematography by Yasushi Sasakibara 

Edited by Nobutake Kamiya

Music by Daisaku Kume 

Produced by Shozo Ichiyama, Toshiba Nabeshima, Takio Yoshida 

Starring 

Beat Takeshi as Azuma 

Hakuryu as Kiyohiro 

Maiko Kawakami as Akari 

Ittoku Kishibe as Boss Nito

Nobuyuki Kaisube as Deputy Police Chief Higuchi 

. . .

"Maybe we'll get in a shootout."

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker. 

Dear Reader, I have a question for you. If a movie has a title like Violent Cop, what kind of an ending do you suppose it will have? A happy ending? Is it about an unswerving avenger-with-a-badge who blows away the bad guys and makes the world safe for consumers, taxpayers, churchgoers, and children? Is it going to be a tragedy of systemic corruption, normalized betrayal, irrational outbursts of violence, and urban alienation? Could it possibly be a story of finding love in the least likely places?

Dear Reader . . . what if I told you . . . that a movie with the title Violent Cop . . . was 'All-of-the-Above?'

Hear me out . . .

Late 1980s . . .

A prosperous city in Japan . . .

People got money to spend . . .

The fashion is on point . . .

Great suits . . .

Great music inside glittering nightclubs . . .

Great shit to snort or inject or smoke . . .

Lots of fuckin' to get into . . .

You can party all night . . .

Nice sit-down restaurants . . .

Lots of electronic consumer goods to purchase . . .

It was a happy time . . .

Had to be . . .

We begin with an elderly homeless man who is seemingly about to enjoy a quiet evening meal, when he is brutally attacked by a gang of teenage boys. This man may be an off-kilter invocation of the unhoused street comrades from the sublimely quirky culinary comedy Tampopo. In Tampopo, the big city is a place of both conflict and gritty perseverance. Life can be hard, but people pull together, things can be worked out, and we can imbue our toils with love, and thereby a sense of meaning. 

We're not in Tampopo anymore. 

The little teenage monsters torment their helpless victim, and disperse into the night. The ringleader makes his way home to a very nice house. Two stories. Upstairs bedroom full of action figures and sports gear. Oblivious parents. Looks like wages without sin, doesn't it?

That's because it is.

But then along comes our avenger: sardonic and stony faced Azuma, our titular Violent Cop, as we will come to discover. Azuma shambles out of the night. At first, it's not entirely clear if he actually is a cop. He could as easily be a serial killer or a con man impersonating the law. Azuma bulls his way into the house, and, hopefully, instills righteous fear in that little terrorist's heart. 

We're rooting for Azuma at this point. This is the guy that sorts out punks. He's Uncle Buck without the power drill. 

But something is off. As the movie unspools, it's never made clear how Azuma knew where to find the ringleader. The elderly victim was in no position to make a positive ID due to his failing eyesight, and the filmic language implies a smooth temporal flow from the opening assault to Azuma's righteous home invasion. So, how did Azuma know to show up at the exact right house?

This suggests to me that Azuma must’ve been lurking in the shadows, and observing the teen gang's attack on the homeless man. 

So . . . why didn't Azuma intervene to spare the elderly man the brutality?

Well . . . maybe Azuma liked what he saw. And Azuma's rousting of the teen terrorist wasn't an act of righteous justice, but merely an extension of Azuma's good time.

Yeah . . . it ain't called Justice Cop.

Or Normal Cop.

It could've been called Sadist Cop, I guess. 

Azuma, as we will discover, likes getting into fights and chases and shootouts. He also likes observing violence. He even gets a kick out of anticipating violence. Azuma prefers to dominate, and when his rage is fully loosed, only sheer weight of numbers seems to contain him. But then we see a moment where tears are pouring down his cheeks. It's Azuma's only moment of emotional release that seems halfway justifiable by any sane framework of mental and moral health. And this only comes when a ruthless gangster has a gun to the Violent Cop's head. Could it be that Azuma has a somewhat more cuddly Masochist Evolution Form chained inside his tormented heart?

There's a Cop vs. Gangster plot afoot. Gangsters sell drugs in nightclubs. Cops endeavor to stop this popular form of recreation and commerce. Gangsters make so much money that some of the Cops want in on the action. So you got Cops vs. Crooked Cops in the mix, too. 

None of the Gangsters seem interested in going over to the Cop Side, which is interesting, and may have something to do with the fear that Azuma spreads as he ruthlessly pummels and tortures various suspected criminals. 

Azuma's excesses get him a handslap from his boss, Higuchi, a newly appointed authority figure. Higuchi chastises Azuma in front of other people, but privately expresses support. Higuchi could be described as a kind of mild-mannered tyrant: not too fond of civil rights, but not comfortable going full police state. Higuchi seems to be a stand-in for a certain kind of voyeur: a coward who likes to authorize and spectate violence, but no desire to get his knuckles bloody. 

To his credit, Azuma clearly has no respect for Higuchi. Nor should he. Of course, this is because Azuma is locked into his own obsessive death trip as opposed to any sort of rational principles. But even once Azuma crosses a few too many lines, the spineless Higuchi still expresses furtive admiration for Azuma. 

Hey, that's love for you. Sometimes, you have to settle for beholding your truest heart's desire from afar . . .

Luxurious sighs . . .

The Gangsters are led by a heartless son-of-a-bitch named Nito, a contemptuous toad of a man who could easily be a United States Republican Presidential candidate if not for endemic white supremacy. Nito loves money. Nito loves giving orders. Nito loves bribing cops who come sniffing around his various nightclubs and sit-down restaurants with rubber-banded stacks of cash. Nito isn't used to having people tell him no. Nito, like Higuchi, likes to keep his hands clean. Unlike Higuchi, though, Nito makes no pretense of upholding some sacred order . . . at first . . .

You see, Nito has come to depend upon a ruthless hitman named Kiyohiro. Kiyohiro likes to kill people with a knife. But Kiyohiro is also good with guns. Kiyohiro is flexible. Kiyohiro is a snappy dresser. He’s also a good lookin' guy. You wouldn't peg him for a remorseless killer. Kiyohiro blends in, gets where he needs to, and kills the people Nito orders him to kill. 

Much like Azuma, Kiyohiro emerges from shadows, strikes, and fades. And, unlike Azuma, doesn't have to sit for a debrief, or fill out paperwork. Gangsters ain't so big on leaving paper trails, y'know?

Kiyohiro is an overachiever, and ends up killing a few too many people. This pisses off Nito-who's a bit of a control freak-and results in humiliation for Kiyohiro. Nito slaps Kiyohiro and verbally berates the hitman . . . and Kiyohiro seems to take it kind of hard. As scary as he is, Kiyohiro has taken on the truly worthless Nito as some kind of surrogate father figure. 

You know what they say:

Gangsters can't feel good inside . . .

Meanwhile, Azuma's one non-Cop relationship is with his sister, Akari, recently released from a psychiatric hospital. Akari isn't capable of taking care of herself or holding down a job. Because we view her through Azuma's eyes, we never understand what her condition is, because, unfortunately, Azuma isn't equipped to understand all this. He's too consumed with his rage to engage with Akari. He tries. He doesn't mean to ignore Akari. But he seemingly disengages to protect her from his rage. This is probably the most unsatisfying element of this film. Needless to say, Akari, too, becomes trapped in the vortex of mayhem that ensues. 

As frightful as they are, Azuma and Kiyohiro are the two most competent characters in this story. Therefore, they are also the most despised, because they serve corrupt, idiotic systems-Cop and Gangster-that foolishly chose to cultivate walking time bombs as their champions. 

Azuma and Kiyohiro are on a fated collision course. Because they have identified themselves with their systems. But also because they are the only people who can authentically connect in a world of vacuous capitalist hypocrisy. Sure, their shared love language is one of extreme violence, but at least there are no lies between them, no bogus promises, no pretense, just action. 

It ain't pretty. 

But it could be an annihilating kind of love.

Which is better than nothing, right?

It was a happy time . . .

Had to be . . .

MOVIE REVIEW: THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME (1932)

Directed by Irving Pichel and Ernest B. Schoedsack
Written by James Ashmore Creelman from the story by Richard Connell
Produced by Ernest B. Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper
Music by Max Steiner

Starring
Joel McCrea as Bob Rainsford
Leslie Banks as Count Zaroff
Fay Wray as Eve
Robert Armstrong as Martin

An RKO Radio Picture

...
"The world's divided into two kinds of people: the hunter and the hunted. Luckily I'm the hunter. Nothing can change that."
            --Bob Rainsford

...

Review by William D. Tucker. 

Pity poor Bob Rainsford. He has no idea what he has inspired . . .

Bob Rainsford (Joel McCrea) is a world renowned big game hunter who's written some bestselling books about the Tao of the Hunter, as it were, which seem to be proto-Ayn Randian works pitched at a thoroughly wankerish level of Neoconservative spankery. But Bob seems like a nice enough guy. He seems like the sort of guy who probably took a hard line when writing the books, but is much more self-deprecating in person, know what I mean? Like, you don't think those right-wing pundits are really that assholish in real life, do you? They're just puttin' on a little show, bro, they got families to feed, ratings to spike, and they gotta strike a tone that resonates throughout the decadent and glutted mediascape, so what's a few lies and exaggerations and fish stories to pad out the page count, eh? No big deal. Rainsford's got books to sell, product to move, world-around cruises to bankroll. Let a player play.

Anyways, Rainsford is on a pleasure cruise with a bunch of his wealthy friends regaling them all with his philosophy which divides all living beings into the hunter and the hunted, when the ship cracks up on a reef. Rainsford is washed ashore on an island and he makes his way inland to a strange castle which has a big sturdy door with a demoniacal knocker on it: a snarling centaur, an arrow piercing his breast, and a helpless woman in his arms . . . you have to pull down on the woman in the arms to make the thing work. Rainsford is admitted into the castle which is a wild-ass gothic affair presided over by the dashing and demented Count Zaroff (Leslie Banks), formerly of Russia, but his accent makes you wonder if that was Russia by way of the little theatre production of Dracula. Count Zaroff is no vampire, however, at least not the supernatural kind. You could say he's the real world version: he gets excited by the thrill of the hunt, he goes into quasi-religious ecstasy at the sight of his prey's blood, and he is oh so glad to meet Rainsford.

The Count is not alone. He has a couple of menacing henchmen for servants, and a couple of other folks who're also shipwrecked: the lovely Eve (Fay Wray) and her supremely obnoxious brother Martin (Robert Armstrong). Martin is a goddamn drunk. He's Arthur before Arthur. The kind of guy who wakes up drunk. Martin's speech is so slurred that it is starting to mutate the English language into a wholly new, sublime, and ludicrous dialect.

Rainsford and Zaroff get to talking, and Zaroff realizes he's talking to the Rainsford, the one who wrote all those books about the hunters and the hunted. Books that Zaroff has read, adored, studied, memorized, and taken on as a kind of philosophy of life. Rainsford is taken aback by all this, and seems like maybe he didn't quite mean every last bit of his argument . . . you know like when the far right crowd starts showing up at Presidential Town Halls strapped and chromed and loaded for bear and then they gotta say, "Oh, we're not advocating violence. We're just advocating showing up at a public event attended by key political leadership of the opposition with loaded assault weapons. That's all well within our Second Amendment rights, yessir!" Rainsford gives the impression that maybe he doesn't believe as fervently in the stark dualism of hunter vs. hunted, but Zaroff will have none of that, and after enduring Martin's exhortations to party down now, and hunt later, the Count drops this:

"He talks of wine and women as a prelude to the hunt. We barbarians know that it is after the chase, and then only, that man revels. You know the saying of the Ogandi chieftans: "Hunt first the enemy, then the woman." It is the natural instinct. The blood is quickened by the kill. One passion builds upon another. Kill, then love! When you have known that, you have known ecstasy."

Rainsford is taken aback by this, but doesn't quite get the full picture until Eve clues him in: apparently some other shipwrecked sailors were taken by the Count on a tour of the Trophy Room and never returned. Eve fears the Count has done something wicked to the able seamen . . .

A few more remarks about this movie: this is one of those movies about hunting humans. Yes, Count Zaroff sees people as "The Most Dangerous Game," and so he hunts them for sport to satiate his bloodlust. This is all pretty obvious once the Count starts talking. What wasn't obvious was just how harrowing that hunt ends up being. For a movie from 1932, this movie moves at a brisk clip, and, once the hunt is on, it doesn't let up. It's a descent into stylized savagery, and the movie plays like a blend of the silent Germanic Expressionism of Lang and Murnau with the pace cranked way up, and the fists landing with audible thuds straight out of the old Saturday Matinee action serials. This movie was also shot concurrently with the original King Kong utilizing the same cast, crew, and lavish jungle sets. The producers doubled-up their productions, and got maximum value for both pictures. Do I need to say that The Most Dangerous Game and King Kong make a thrilling double feature? Hey, I said it. 

As stated above, this is one of those movies about hunting humans, maybe the first. It is derived from a short story by Richard Connell, which, if memory serves, was more about a one on one battle between shipwrecked Rainsford and the villainous Zaroff on a remote island, but the movie version increases the number of folks involved and makes quite a memorable villain out of Zaroff. 

Zaroff is played by Leslie Banks, who had suffered a real life World War I injury which partially paralyzed and scarred the left side of his face. This injury is incorporated into the character of Zaroff as an injury suffered while stalking a beast in the wild. It is implied by the movie that this injury may have nudged Zaroff towards the dark side. In some ways it also seems to play on the notion of shell-shock, the nervous breakdown experienced by veterans of WWI's brutal trench warfare. Maybe you could even look at Count Zaroff as a melodramatic and villainous cousin to the haunted Septimus Warren Smith from Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway.

The Most Dangerous Game has seemingly given birth to a whole sub-genre of films dealing with the idea of some sort of life and death bloodsport played out like some kind of evil big game hunt: Hard Target, Surviving the Game, The Running Man, and, most spectacularly,  the year 2000's Battle Royale adapted from a novel published in 1999. 

Battle Royale concerns a fiendish game orchestrated by a totalitarian Japanese government which pits teenage students against each other with a variety of randomly distributed weapons. It's like a massively multiplayer online shoot 'em up made real. The referee of this sick game is played by Takeshi Kitano, one of Japan's living national treasures. Kitano is a novelist, filmmaker, actor, comedian, talk show host, visual artist, video game designer--he's done it all. Kitano was also once in a motorcycle accident which left his face partially paralyzed . . .

So, there you have the Takeshi Kitano/Leslie Banks/The Most Dangerous Game/Battle Royale connection, trivial and coincidental though it may be . . .