Ore wa matteru ze

The movie may move just a little too slowly for the incredible amount of coincidence that the plot relies on.

Satisfying but spotty Japanese noir. The two threads of the story are connected, but only by coincidence, and thus the film has two unmatched halves. The first is more engaging; the second has its moments, but is fairly routine and doesn't have much of a payoff. The revelation that it seemed like it was building up to was more interesting than the one that was delivered. But the film has a lot of flashy noir style, with some wonderfully framed shots, and the two leads are quite personable.

I was expecting a film noir but what I got was a fairly standard crime drama.

Just a cool fuckin movie

A gorgeous, if ultimately uninspired little bit of Japanese noir. It's a slow burn if I've ever seen one, but a few of the fight scenes are worth sticking around for. Some of the most brutal fistfights I've ever seen, and I've watched Dredd and grew up in the Deep South.

A great slow burn of a noir. Starts off slow, but keeps a keen and subtle eye on the characters as it puts all the pieces in place. Ishihara's slow transition into righteous rampage is made the more exciting and satisfying by Kurahara's solid character work in the first half. Also features a really cool tying together of narrative threads that seemed totally unconnected, which could have felt like convenient plot contrivance but instead feels like fate is inevitably pushing everything to a head.

First Kurahara that I've seen and also the first one I watched from Eclipse's "Nikkatsu Noir" DVD set. This was an efficient noir which contains a lot of familiar elements like characters haunted by their past, harbour and shady nightclubs. The main difference was probably that the cast was younger than in American ones. I would have hoped for a bit more local flavour than the occasional sushi bar and songs but that clearly wasn't the film-makers intention.

I like the set-up. It's a stylish film featuring characters with dubious pasts and uncertain futures. But it never capitalizes on that noirish potential, instead blatantly losing its way to become a shallow revenge thriller and mere imitation of American and European gangster films.