Brother (2001)

Takeshi Taktino has been a great crime director since the eighties, his sort of step into western cinema "Brother" is a heavy hitting gangster film about loyalty, blood bonds and sometimes confusing story telling. The editing of the film is a bit confusing as it will have you seeing one thing before dropping you into a completely unrelated situation where you don't have a clue how the characters have gotten into the situation or why but that aside the cinematography is stunning, not through scenery or what's happening on screen but just through where the camera has been placed. The story when you break it down is more or less the same basis as a lot of Katino's films, the old ways vs the new but this so far has seemed to work. You might get a bit tired of seeing the same facial expression on Katino's face but again in this film it seems's to work.

I rarely write reviews here and like a previous reviewer of this film I had never heard of this movie until it randomly came on HBO. I am a big fan of Japanese movies and I really like Kitano so I watched with interest and it payed off big time. While this is an extremely violent gangster movie I can't help but think of it as an art film. There is more said during the long silences than the bursts of dialog and the relatively brief amount of dialog becomes all the more important and impactful because of its scarcity. I really never thought I could see a thought provoking artistic delivery of a mob movie but here it is. Kitano delivers a true gem that I didn't think could exist. 11/10!

I have seen a lot of Yakuza movies, and heard a lot of positive things about Kitano and this movie, but when I watched this movie I was very surprised. The movie is mainly set in America, a great idea I thought at first, but when I saw the American actors that they had casted I wanted to turn the screen off immediately, because it's very difficult to take characters who keep saying 'yo yo dude, what's up?' seriously. However if you don't mind such speech it might be less frustrating to watch this movie. The second thing that I didn't like about this movie was the violence, when someone was shot death I always frowned and thought: 'what this necessary?'. in the violent scenes you often saw everything explicitly but it was never disgusting or shocking, which is odd for a yakuza movie. so all in all I don't recommend this movie at all, there are far better Yakuza movies out there for the fans.

Many people treat this film as a total disaster; as an totally abortive experiment. But in my opinion this movie set a new standard for movies, which are trying to combine the very diverse film styles from Japan and the US; a real success, with small glitches; that i have to agree with ;)But nonetheless i was stunt how well this collaboration worked out. (yeah, i know; many people won't agree with me here) Especially if you compare this film, which was again a showcase for Kitano's brilliant talent, to other attempts of Japanese filmmakers to include American culture in Japanese films. The results are often hilariously bad. They are either very racist or pretty tacky.Now in this film the American actors are shining. They are believable living personalities. And the reason lies within the special Kitano film-making-technique, which totally differs from the well known Hollywood and Japanese "Dorama" construction kit-alike filmaking. And the other very important thing is, that the American part is neither colliding with the Japanese style nor is it being manipulated by the Japanese part. I was also amazed by the special way the American cast acted. It felt sometimes way more natural than in all these cliché Hollywood productions. A simply fascinating symbiosis of those two film-styles. Kitano stated that he doesn't plan to do another film like this one; well, that's OK with me. This makes "Brother" as an experiment and as a movie more unique anyway. ;)Well this is one of many reasons, why this film has to be considered a masterpiece. So there is far more to praise: The beautiful and dramatic music by Joe Hisaishi, the very fitting/stylish costume design, the incessant stunning photography and the very censoriously storyline, which shows that building your own cartel might confront you with some bloodshed ... ;)well, that's it! (should write more reviews in the future .. It's pretty fun! ;) So if you are considering yourself a Kitano-fan: watch it and you will probably be pretty amazed ;) If you are a first-timer to Kitano .. be careful. If you don't like this one you probably won't like all the others ... except the less violent ones like Dolls or "A scene at the sea" for instance; those are also fascinating pieces of art and shouldn't be ignored!