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I've never completely understood the compelling attraction of gangster movies. I have a friend who's fascinated by the mob in all its various incarnations--mafia, yakuza, etc.--and loves seeing gangster flicks. I admit that there are classics that transcend the genre (The Godfather, The Godfather II, and Pulp Fiction, to name just a few), but really, these guys are thugs and criminals. What's the draw? The code of honor, the ties of brotherhood? Surely one doesn't need to be into organized crime to experience all that. But that's just my bias.
It's this bias that informs my response to Brother, a film about a yakuza ousted from Japan and taking up residence in Los Angeles. Kitano Takeshi wrote and directed the film, and he also stars as the hardened, middle-age yakuza who, forced to leave Japan, heads to L.A. to look up his younger brother. There, he finds younger brother involved with a bunch of low-level hoods and drug dealers, taking orders from the local drug king-pins. He almost reflexively starts to weld them into a more efficient, cohesive force, and in the process ends up making this newly re-constituted gang the toughest kids on the block, taking over from the local latino crew with ruthlessly executed violence.
Brother deploys its violence to good effect, eschewing the stylish gun ballet of John Woo and his many clones in favor of the abrupt and shocking. Kitano is almost affectless as an actor; his facial tic is probably the most emotive bit in his repetoire. Even so, he does bring a certain stolid, brooding presence to the production. I just wish I cared more. Brother certainly doesn't show that crime pays; this being a gangster flick, of course it all ends up badly in the end, when the boys run into a gang even tougher than they are. Still, at the end, my reaction was largely a shrug and a yawn.
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