Takeshi Kitano is without a doubt one of the greatest living film directors. He got his start as a film director with the action film Violent Cop. Interestingly, he sort of stumbled into this job. He was hired to play a supporting role, when the director dropped out. Kitano took the reins of the project and reworked the comedic script into a much darker, more sombre film. He upped his own role to lead and then turned the story into something more akin to Dirty Harry, where it had previously been more along the lines of Lethal Weapon and other comedic action flicks. Kikujiro is worlds away from Violent Cop, and certainly one of the must download internet movies if you want to see what Takeshi Kitano is really all about.
Kikujiro marks a completely different direction for Takeshi Kitano. Where his earlier films were typically violent gangster flicks, this one is sweet, sentimental, and focused on the concepts of belonging, family, and acceptance. It's very touching, very upbeat and positive, and will certainly leave you with a smile on your face, if not a tear in your eye.
Kitano really has had an interesting career. Having once been a popular stage comedian, he stumbled into that career, too. He had been the emcee of a popular nightclub when the comedian of the night got sick and Kitano had to take over. The rest is history.
He would eventually become a popular TV show host, and even get a job designing his own video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System, called Takeshi's Challenge. The game followed a salaryman who gambles, drinks and fights the yakuza. It featured bizarre challenges such as holding a button for an hour straight and a last boss who takes well over one hundred thousand individual strikes to kill. It wasn't so much a game as it was a torture device, starting with a warning reading "This game was made by a man who hates video games!"
Kitano's strange sense of humor really comes through in everything he does, and Kikujiro is no exception. The film follows an old man, played by Kitano, and a young boy as they journey across the country to find the boy's mother. Along the way, the old man spends all their money on gambling, thinking that the kid can predict the winning horse after a lucky streak.
Later, Kitano is forced to beg for food for himself and the boy. He gets two sandwiches, hides one, and tells the boy "You eat, I don't need food right now". He then hides around the corner to eat his own sandwich. It's a funny scene, showing that he may be a lovable loser, but he really wants the child's respect and isn't afraid of lying to get it!
The movie is, again, very sweet. Watching the old man and the young boy bond is moving and touching, and within one another, the two find their own definition of the word family.
The movie Kitano is known for in the US is Sonatine, but just as Chow Yun Fat is a comedy star in Asia, not an action star, Kitano is a man capable of much more than just gangster flicks.
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