April 16–23, 1998

movie shorts

Sonatine

Hopefully there's more behind the recent mini-furor surrounding Japanese multi-threat Takeshi Kitano than Sonatine would indicate; either that or there's a whole lot of people looking way too hard for the next big thing. A gangster story told in cool, formalist tones, Sonatine aims somewhere between Ozu and Peckinpah and ends up stepping in knee-jerk nihilism. In the lead role (he also wrote and directed), Takeshi tries to pass off laziness as world-weariness, playing a yakuza boss who's had enough of killing but lacks the will to get out (or indeed, to do anything). It's possible Takeshi, who is also half of a famous comedy duo, is playing off a star persona most viewers aren't familiar with, but even if that's true, it doesn't make his passivity any easier to bear. The juxtaposition of the mundane and the brutal becomes formulaic in a hurry—as soon as you hear Muzak, you know someone's going to get shot-and the plot seems unnecessarily complicated for a story with such broad themes. (The atrocious subtitles don't help, either; I doubt the phrase, "Fuck you, fuck" really appears as many times in the script as on the screen.) Wait for the screening of Takeshi's more recent Fireworks at the 1998 PFWC to see if the hype is worth believing.

—Sam Adams