Product: Brother [VHS]
Rating: 4.0
Kitano's first US film is his most uncompromisingly Japanese
Of all the directors who have plundered the legacy of Jean-Pierre Melville for superficial treasure, Takeshi Kitano has always been the most intelligent, the most alert to the Frenchman's metaphysical drive. 'Brother', Kitano's mostly marvellous new feature, is imbued with all things Melville, from the opening silent wandering of yakuza hero Yamomoto, like Jef Costello in 'Le Samourai', and his Alain Delon-lookalike sidekick, to the muted blue color palette, the faceless glass buildings and grey ritual beach from 'Dirty Money'.Most pertinent, however, is Melville's under-rated 'Two men in Manhattan' (1959). That was Melville's first American film; this is Takeshi's; both directors' first cultural work in the country whose major urban genre they had made their own. And like Melville, instead of dealing with this new country and its customs, Kitano seems to have become more obsessively Japanese, even more interested in ritual, stylisation, nation, philosophy. In other words, Kitano has taken foreign money to make an uncompromisingly personal film which, like 'Boiling Point' and 'Kids' Return', turns the gangster film into a perverse rites-of-passage.