3 out of 10
I can't understand why this movie has such comments and ratings. I saw Mabudachi expecting it to be something else than just a boring drama, and got very disappointed.
This movie is classed as a Japanese drama about three school kids in the late 80's (even though late 90's cars go by the camera). The plot is just a giant McGuffin to criticize the fascism in the school education, and the traditional Japanese family values. However, the film isn't strong enough to cover this McGuffin, making it too obvious to be interesting and deep. It's not such a big problem of plot, but of direction. There are amazing shoots and really nice symbolic scenes through the movie, but ain't correlative with the overall film. The good scenes just seem to be attached ones with the others with 30' transitions of crappy footage, and the beautiful take s are re-shot once and again from every angle possible, making some localizations really tedious (didn't forgot to film 1" of the bridge); the contrast between dramatic scenes and slow-peaced scenes, can be used to relax the audience in order to emphasize the drama (Hana-bi, for example, uses this contrast and succeeds), but it doesn't work here.
In conclusion, the movie has a good set out, but fails when trying to develop the anecdote. As it has some nice points and a few interesting dramatic scenes it may worth a rental if you are common with Japanese cinema. However, if you are looking for somekind of good critic to the Japanese society, all Kitano movies, even Fukasaku's Battle Royale, will do far better than Bad Company.
I can't understand why this movie has such comments and ratings. I saw Mabudachi expecting it to be something else than just a boring drama, and got very disappointed.
This movie is classed as a Japanese drama about three school kids in the late 80's (even though late 90's cars go by the camera). The plot is just a giant McGuffin to criticize the fascism in the school education, and the traditional Japanese family values. However, the film isn't strong enough to cover this McGuffin, making it too obvious to be interesting and deep. It's not such a big problem of plot, but of direction. There are amazing shoots and really nice symbolic scenes through the movie, but ain't correlative with the overall film. The good scenes just seem to be attached ones with the others with 30' transitions of crappy footage, and the beautiful take s are re-shot once and again from every angle possible, making some localizations really tedious (didn't forgot to film 1" of the bridge); the contrast between dramatic scenes and slow-peaced scenes, can be used to relax the audience in order to emphasize the drama (Hana-bi, for example, uses this contrast and succeeds), but it doesn't work here.
In conclusion, the movie has a good set out, but fails when trying to develop the anecdote. As it has some nice points and a few interesting dramatic scenes it may worth a rental if you are common with Japanese cinema. However, if you are looking for somekind of good critic to the Japanese society, all Kitano movies, even Fukasaku's Battle Royale, will do far better than Bad Company.