Takeshi Kitano directs Beat Takeshi, Omar Epps and Claude Maki in this gangster thriller where a rejected Yakuza travels to LA and takes over the town.

Fish out of water. An near silent, blank faced Mick Dundee. A movie of moments. Some wonderful, some blunt and clumsy. The gangster stuff is very cartoon-ish. Lost in translation pastiche. Yet there are slabs of Takeshi’s absurdism and heartfelt visual poetry. Feels like a redundant stumble after all the palpable evolutions the director / star / writer / editor went through in the Nineties. Not that this loses the game, it just sullies the perfect batting average. At the very least has a lush Joe Hisaishi score. That incongruous aspect and Epps’ central role does give this a lot of spiritual overlap with Spike Lee’s Clockers.

6

Perfect Double Bill: Kids Return (1995)

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