Product: Brother [VHS]
Rating: 1.0
Horrible Treatment by Sony Pictures
Kitano's "BrotherEgets eaten and spit out by Sony Pictures US. Not exactly a masterpiece, or the best movie he has done, but it gave a great insight into the Yakuza lifestyle rarely known outside of Japan. But on this DVD, the lackluster treatment of this movie is unforgivable.If some of the story was a little on the unexplained side, maybe it's because the US version is 30 minutes shorter than the Japanese original. Most of the Japanese sequences were cut, so Americans won't have to read too many subtitles. Great move(?). The DTS audio option was thrown out for some reason, thinking people who might like this movie will not have a DTS decoder. Sony, get with the times!The biggest problem I had with this DVD was that there were no English subtitles! It is listed as `English SubtitlesEbut in fact, it's English Closed Captions, so even when they are speaking English, the captions appear. Luckily I understand both languages, but for anyone else, they would be a headache to sit through.Extras are very minimal, only trailers for completely unrelated Chinese movies? For a list price so high, it just seems smarter to get the fully loaded Region 2 Japanese release. Believe me the story makes a LOT more sense.Also, the character that Tetsuya Watari plays is such a minor role in the US version, it was a shame that his name appears in the credits. If you want to check out a role where he actually is part of the MOVIE, get `Tokyo DrifterE(Criterion Collection). You'll be a lot happier with that film.