Boiling Point (1990)

Slightly crazy star 'Beat' Takeshi was well-known in the '80s for his role as the host and creator of TAKESHI'S CASTLE, the insane game show where contestants injured themselves in a series of weird games. Takeshi made his directorial debut with VIOLENT COP, an effective and downbeat thriller, and followed up that film's success with this, his second outing as director.I didn't enjoy BOILING POINT as much as Takeshi's previous film, mainly because of the performance of Takeshi himself. Takeshi appears in an extended cameo in the middle part of the film in a role that has little to do with the main plot; in fact, his thirty-minute turn is like a 'mini film' in itself, a portrait of an insane gangster who dishes out violence to one and all, whether it be his henchman, his girlfriend or the gangsters who formerly employed him. This is Takeshi gone over the edge; he's a sadistic, vindictive character and incredibly his cruel exploits are played for laughs, particularly his repetitive violence towards his girlfriend. Are we supposed to laugh at this stuff, I wonder? Because watching this guy commit rape (on his own henchman in the film's most depraved moment) and casual violence isn't my idea of fun. I liked Takeshi in VIOLENT COP and BATTLE ROYALE, but I couldn't stand him here.It's a shame, as the rest of the film is pretty damn good. We witness the transformation of a mild-mannered gas station attendant into a suicidal fighter against the mob, and the whole film centres around this character of Masaki. Actor Yurei Yanagi, who takes the leading role in his debut performance, is bloody excellent and a real trooper. Although the film offers the Japanese style of taciturn acting – the male actors rarely show expression on their faces – Yanagi makes us sympathise with his character's plight and, indeed, actually like him.Although the film is essentially a slow-burning revenge flick, you'll be surprised to hear that the action and violence is limited. There's only one shoot-out in the film, although there are quite a few beat-downs and other moments of crazy violence. Instead there's an emphasis on baseball, with many well-shot matches, and characterisation. Many of the incidents within the film, such as the car and motorbike accidents and the casual violence meted out by Takeshi himself, are played for laughs but the humour value is intermittent, not always working. As a result, BOILING POINT is very much a cult movie, one for lovers of offbeat comedy and bizarre, almost surreal antics rather than fans of traditional gangster movies.

Strange—an elegant thug picks on a small, shy, hapless baseball player-gas station attendant, who hits him back. The yakuzas take the affront seriously, and there's a complicated multiple-layer plot, involving the main character's sudden improvement as a baseball-player—he hits a home-run but overruns the slow runner ahead of him—and somehow involving a friend and former gangster, Iguchi, who demands respect, and sends the guy to Okinawa to buy a gun. In Okinawa with the slow runner he falls in with a pair of gangsters who party all night and get guns the next day; the main gangster, played by the director "Beat" Takeshi, is casually mean to his girlfriend, and he kills the gun merchant and the very formal yakuzas who are demanding money from him. As the gas station attendant and the slow runner leave he's killed in the parking lot of the Okinawa airport. The gsa and the sr go to the yakuza headquarters with the gun, but they don't know how to take the safety off and get beaten up. The gsa takes a fuel truck and with his pretty young girlfriend crashes into the y hq in an enormous ball of flame. The movie ends as it began, in the darkness of the portable john, and then as the credits roll the gsa trots across the park to the ballfield. I don't know—it's sort of disaffected or something, the main character hardly reacting to the world, expressionless mostly. Some funny scenes, and a lot of tough talk and punching and pointless mess.

I really can't understand how anyone could see anything good about this movie. The story was incredibly choppy, there were numerous unexplicable gaps in the plot and the story. There wasn't a single character in the movie that was enjoyable or likable to watch except maybe iguchi. The main character basically just stood there for the whole movie, not even reacting to what happens around him. The few times he does act it is in a nonsensical way. I suppose that is supposed to indicate a mild-manner man reached his boiling point, but really it just felt contrived.I suppose maybe if you are a fan of Beat you will like this movie, but he is only in it for a portion of the second half.This is the lowest I have rated a film in a year and I have seen some really bad movies.

Simply an awesome movie. I have no idea whatsoever if I got the movie the way intended. But what I did get was a couple of things. It's one of the funniest and most bizarre films I have ever seen. No matter what happens, people crashing motorcycles, getting beaten etc, no one, ever, shows any emotion. Just the "classic" japanese stone-face. There is no soundtrack in this movie either, and tempo is kinda low, but explodes now and then with meaningless violence. This might sound like utter crap, but Kitano pulls it off, and does it very well. It works, it's fun and it's interesting.