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[Hide] (364.2KB, 888x480) Reverse I saw Gonin (1995) last week. Japanese crime movie about a club owner who tries to settle his debts with the Yakuza... by robbing the Yakuza. The title means "five people" or "the five" if you prefer.
I found it a mixed bag. It's violent to the point of monotony: two dudes lock eyes and you know one is going to punch the other for one reason or another. It's self-consciously violent, kind of like Hotline Miami or Gantz where people kill partly for the thrill, without considering the consequences. I reckon that's the main thing the film wants to talk about, along with greed, desperation, and futility.
The protagonist is a man named Bandai, a businessman with a debt to the Yakuza. In a dream, he recalls an encounter with a flamboyant yakuza, kind of like Goro Majima. Bandai overhears voices in the back alley, and there's great suspense as Bandai draws closer to the source of the sound. The rhythmic pinging. You know what that sound is. Not-Majima is working a dude over with an aluminum bat. He notices the interloper, and does what you expect: tries to stab Bandai in the eye with a switchblade.
I forget some of the details of the first hour, but Bandai recruits four dudes to carry out a heist:
Ogiwara, a dorky salaryman who turns out to be batshit insane. Having lost his financial prospects, he murdered his wife and kids and now lives with their corpses while hallucinating that they're still alive.
Jimmy, a semi-retarded lowlife and perhaps the only one whose motivation is basically noble: he works a shit job and wants money to send his SEAsian hooker GF back home, where he thinks she'll be happy. She has a weird, animalistic attitude toward life. Also, you see her handbag at one point— I can't remember, but if it was a luxury item, that says something rather profound about her character.
Hiza, semi-reformed criminal with an estranged wife and daughter who he still cares for. His tenacity and savoir-faire almost mark him as the hero of the story. There is no "hero" in this story.
Mitsuya, I.E., not-Majima a Yak. I've forgotten what his motivations were supposed to be; I wasn't paying close attention for the first hour.
Together, they bumble through the heist successfully. Bandai (who is visiting the office under false pretenses) has a finger cut off for whatever the hell they think he was doing there, but is let off rather than being tortured to death.
Then comes something interesting: the movie turns from a heist to a horror movie. The Yaks enlist an assassin (Kyoya) and his buttboy (Kazuma) whose joint role in the plot is like a Jason Voorhees/Michael Myers horror movie killer, always lurking in the least probable places, waiting to strike. The rest of the movie is them picking off the five conspirators who, concordantly, have the situational awareness of a gaggle of skinny-dipping girls.
Ogiwara returns home, and you're guessing what's about to happen. We know he has a family— will he find them dead? The answer is yes, but not for the reason you think. He goes from room to room having conversations.
<I come home from work, but my bath isn't even ready.
>I should never have married you. I had better choices. A tall guy from Tokyo University.
<Fuck you! I'm good when I want to be! Don't say I'm stupid and uneducated.
After eventually settling into a bath with his wife, the assassins burst in on this guy stewing in the rancid ganges-water, just as he's proposing sex— good God, has he done this before? It's like a twist on the "room 217" scene from The Shining. These moments of surreality elevate what you expected to be a story on autopilot.
Something more obviously thematic follows. Ogiwara had said "you should be like Daddy. You have to be like me!" whereas the assassins chat as Kazuma fixates on the corpse of Ogiwara's daughter, slumped over a piano. Kyoya takes offense to something he says, because everyone in this movie is looking for an excuse to punch someone in the face at all times:
<Take off your clothes. Take them off!
>You're a great man. You stabbed the mayor when you were 13.
<So what?
>Your mother's great, too. She became a prostitute so she could raise you.
<So what? Idiot! Get them off! Am I really great?
>You're great.
<Tell me again. Am I really great? How great am I?
People who don't naturally command respect can only compel it, etc. The film drives this point very deliberately. Without lube, even. I really liked how as they're having this bizarre poopdick exchange, the camera gradually pans toward the pallid hand hanging from the piano to underscore the hellishly samsaric quality of everything that's happening.
Toward the end, Mitsuya decides to kill himself after Bandai dies (these two are also gay; make of that what you will) but loses his nerve. He ends up escaping on a bus where, of course, he's ambushed. Predator and prey kill each other while the driver and the rest of the passengers have disembarked at a rest stop. "I'm tired, let's rest" says Kyoya, and they both perish in their seats. The driver returns, counts his passengers without noticing what's happened in the back, and drives away. Mitsuya's corpse stares placidly out the window, and the credits roll.
Pretty good movie. I rate it higher on reflection than I did upon seeing the ending. The ending is like the punchline to a bitter joke, and I found the joke well-told.