Product: Brother [VHS]
Rating: 3.0
FIREWORKS AGAIN? NOT QUITE...
Kitano Takeshi's first American directorial effort plays it safe thematically, while upgrading production quality and the level of violence. BROTHER is almost a remake of SONATINE, including his trademark touches of long, quiet scenes followed by sudden eruptions of violence, important events taking place offscreen (which Kitano learned from Mizoguchi Kenji) and so on. There's even a reference to a shootout visible only via flashing lights in SONATINE.Another odd thing is the movie taking time to explicate the value system of the Japanese yakuza, as if Kitano felt it necessary to show to American audience the ABCs of the yakuza genre. Seemingly no one remembered to tell him that there already is Sidney Lumet's excellent YAKUZA with Robert Mitchum and Takakura Ken, wherein Mitchum cuts off his pinkie in the end to show appreciation for Takakura. (James Shigeta, a veteran Japanese American actor, who plays Yamamoto's accountant in BROTHER, was in it too)BROTHER is a disappointment to those who take Kitano seriously as a cineaste and not just a genre filmmaker, but the film is not without its charms and strengths. The central relationship between Omar Epps and Beat Takeshi is well-developed, and even though the redundancy of the very last scene has been pointed out, I would have to say that it works in the context of Epps' character.As for the censorship, a mid-80s actioner such as THE CHALLENGE was far more violent than BROTHER, so I have no idea why they even bothered. In fact, THE CHALLENGE clearly showed a man's intenstines dangling from a sword slash, whereas a similar scene was obviously censored in this movie.