Brother (2001)

★★
Brother made such an insignificant impact on me that only a few hours after seeing it, I have forgotten huge portions of it. This is a movie that will likely slip out from under you like a banana peel. Takeshi Kitano, the writer and director, gives us very little information on the plot. We're supposed to admire his technique, you see. His method here, as in his dull 1997 effort Fireworks, is to pause the action so that we can study the characters, to figure out what they're thinking and to allow the scene to sink in, before he jolts us with sudden and shocking violence. After about a dozen or so scenes like this, I grew impatient.

When Kitano stars in his movies, the credits list him as Beat Takeshi. Takeshi stars as Aniki Yamamoto, a Japanese gangster who is presented with the choice of either death or leaving the country. Aniki decides to leave, travels to Los Angeles and searches for his half-brother who went there to study but ended up pushing drugs on the street. After Aniki meets up with Ken (Kuroudo Maki) and his friends, he decides to wage war on all the local gangs, using Ken and his friends as his army.

Kitano offers no clear explanation for this development. I suppose that's the point. I can appreciate the fact that Kitano doesn't want to make a conventional action movie, in which people shoot each other in a thrilling climax, but holding back information from the audience is not the answer. John Woo has been making non-formulaic action pictures since 1986's A Better Tomorrow and doing a better job of it.

As the plot progresses, Aniki enlists the aid of another gang to take out the Italian Mafia. Aniki takes his newfound friends from the streets and puts them up in a penthouse. Hit and run tactics follow, the body count rises, but soon the Italians prove to be too much. Denny (Omar Epps), one of Ken's friends, becomes close to Aniki, and by the time the end comes around, they team up to rid themselves of a threat they started in the first place.

A discussion about Brother's violence is inevitable. Heck, the other critics are doing it. The version I saw was the R-rated cut, though I hardly think the uncut version would improve things much. No more characters die in this movie than in any other action flick. I was reminded of all the heat surrounding Pulp Fiction's body count, but the observant viewer could see that those reports were exaggerated. There are a few scenes in Brother that might make some viewers uneasy, but I have stronger stomach than most I guess. I'm always searching for something different, but Brother is too concerned with being different and unique that the result is sluggish. By the time we figure out Kitano's style, we can start predicting when something unexpected will happen.

I have seen two of Kitano's movies, and I've been unimpressed with both. I will not judge his entire body of work on the basis of these two films, but since he hasn't made an impact on me, I won't rush out to watch anything of his anytime soon.

© 2001 Silver Screen Reviews