Movie Review: "Fireworks" ("Hana-Bi")

[Gop-Dogg]

Takeshi Kitano (aka 'Beat' Takeshi) is Japan's official "King of All Media." However, unlike Howard Stern's hubristic self-annointment to that title here in the US, Kitano is the real thing. He got his start as a stand-up comic, but he's an actor, director, novelist, poet, newpaper columnist, TV personality and TV show producer (he's one of the creators and hosts of the outlandish Japanese TV show "Takeshi's Castle," currently being shown on SpikeTV as "Most Extreme Elimination Challenge"). He's also one of Quentin Tarantino's favorite directors.

Despite his comedic roots, Kitano's films tend to be very dark, depressing affairs generally characterized by long stretches of visually intriguing silence punctuated by sudden outbursts of shockingly brutal and bloody violence. His 1997 film "Fireworks" was his first to get a US release. It deals with the tribulations of former undercover cop Nishi (Kitano) as he copes with his wife's terminal leukemia in the wake of the sudden death of their daughter.

Nishi is a man who feels only two things: extreme joy and extreme anger. When he's happy, such as when he's with his wife, he's on cloud 9. But say the wrong word or make a wrong move and he explodes into a furious tornado of terrifying violence. However, since Nishi is a man of few words (in fact, there isn't all that much dialogue in the movie), you never know when he'll crack and heaven help anyone who's in his viscinity when he goes.

The movie jumps back and forth in time, composing the story in pieces. We learn how Nishi's best friend and fellow cop, Horibe, tells him to skip out on his stakeout shift to see his wife at the hospital. However, the stakeout goes horribly wrong and their pursuit of the criminal subject ends up even worse: one cop gets killed, another in the hospital and Horibe in a wheelchair - but not before Nishi empties his service revolver into the perp's face. This background info is spread over the length of the film and is recounted in such a disorienting yet deft manner that we initially aren't sure who exactly is doing the shooting.

Overcome by these tragedies, Nishi decides to dedicate himself to making his wife's final days as enjoyable as possible. However, he's constantly thwarted by his own bi-polar personality and the yakuza thugs who keep trying to shake him down for the money he owes them (presumably to pay for his wife's hospital bills). When two yakuza accost him in a noodle bar, Nishi stabs one of them through the eye with a pair of chopsticks and stomps the other one's face in in a scene so shockingly quick and brutal that we can't quite believe what we've just seen.

Nishi's relationship with his wife is an odd one. They appear to love each other a great deal, but they barely say a word to each other. In fact, Nishi's wife only has one line of dialog in the entire film, but when it comes, it is devastating. And that pretty well sums up the film's style: minimalist and drained to the absolute essentials. There isn't an extraneous frame of film to be found. Every image, virtually every word spoken, has a purpose and nothing else is presented.

A counterpoint to the overbearing doom and gloom of Nishi's life is his friend Horibe. Left paralyzed after the botched stakeout, Horibe is deal a further blow when his wife deserts him with their daughter. However, unlike Nishi, who sinks ever deeper into a black hole of self loathing, Horibe decides to persevere, taking up painting as a sort of self-help therapy. His strange and disturbing paintings of animals and people with various flowers in place of their heads serve to highlight the idea of rebirth in the face of destruction. This ties back to the etymology of the Japanese title: fire and flower.

Overall the film is an interesting and somewhat demanding work. Very unconventional from a Hollywood standpoint due to the minimalist style, but delivers an emotional wallop few Hollywood pictures can with twice the effort.