Out there somewhere, in a parallel universe, the rules of film-making are inverted.
Rule number 1: You cannot have too much exposition.
Visual storytelling is replaced by dialogue-heavy scenes, the more the better.
Rule number 2: Over-acting is better than acting.
If you are really thirsty and you drink a beer, you have to close your eyes, look to the heavens, ooh and ah, fall to your knees, and declare out loud how damn GOOD it tastes, all the while talking to yourself. You know, like in a beer commercial.
The bad news is, director Toya Sato has escaped from that parallel universe into ours, and brought this clunking, tawdry, disjointed insult to the proud tradition of Japanese cinema with him.
The story, such as it is, is that Kaiji has a huge gambling debt and his life is going nowhere. That leads him to becoming the plaything of a misanthropic multi-billionaire building a nuclear shelter using slave labour and with a penchant for life-and-death gambling games.
Not a bad premise, but utterly sunk in this execution.
If film is stories told by pictures, and the Japanese are a non-verbal culture, could someone please tell me why there is so much TALKING in this film? Kaiji crosses a narrow bridge 200 meters in the air. He looks behind to see that his friend has fallen. The audience can see he has fallen. But Kaiji tells us: "He has fallen." Endo watches a five-card game. The players play three cards, and each play is a draw. They have two cards left. We can see this, but somehow we get to hear Endo's thoughts, which tell us: "After three cards played it is a draw. It is down to the last two cards." Who exactly is this insipid narration for? Is there a retarded baboon wearing earplugs and a blindfold sitting at the back of the theatre that Sato felt the need to accommodate? I have given only two examples, but the whole film is like this. The most glaringly obvious action is either replayed, or explained verbosely by one character to another.
Characterization is practically non-existent. Kaiji is a gambler, but where he came from, how he ended up in such a rut, is never mentioned. He empathises with one of his fellow victims, but it is not clear why. At his ostensible moment of triumph, he is celebrating gambling wins and downing a beer - despite the horror of watching all of his comrades in arms falling from the aforementioned narrow bridge. He starts the movie caring only for himself, and finishes it the same way. And we know no more about him.
Endo is a gangster but seems taken by Kaiji, even though she is fully complicit in the murder and mayhem games that afflict him. It turns out she is no good, and this puts a period on the film's major failing - there is no one to like. All of the characters start out as reprehensible, and never redeem themselves. They never grow, learn, or reflect.
Plotting is flimsy. Kaiji at one point conveniently produces a magic marker to draw with, despite just being released from a dungeon. The dungeon prisoners suddenly get a TV in their cell where no one existed before. At one point, on a ship, a left-over card in the game seals Kaiji's fate. It is a huge moment story-wise, propelling us into the next sequence. But as the game starts with an even number of cards and they are discarded two at a time, it is impossible for there to be one left-over card. Lazy, ill-disciplined scripting at its worst.
Pacing is uneven to say the least. The bridge crossing takes an eternity, as Kaiji and his older pal have a sentimental outpouring about their lives so far. And yet when we come back to the job at hand - crossing the bridge - we find out that the guy on the other bridge has made no progress during the course of the interminable conversation. I mean, what was he doing all this time?
Tatsuya Fujiwara overacts furiously. His beer-drinking antics are just shameful, the worst hamming since... well, since the last TV director was allowed to make a Japanese film. Amami is usually classy, but even she can't get out of TV mode and comes across as wooden. Ken'ichi Matsuyama makes a cameo, and seems a class apart, making effective use of that menacing stare of his. Probably because he appears less, he took less direction from Sato, and therefore acts better.
Teruyuki Kagawa, usually so reliable and watchable, is dragged under by too-close close-ups, patchy pacing, and the failure to resist cranking it up a couple of notches. A better director would have gotten a better performance, one feels.
It is incredulous that with this budget and this cast Kaiji turns out to be so mind-numbingly awful. Based on a comic, with a TV director, didn't someone realise that the element 'cinema' needed to be added to the equation? Sato and friends - go to film school, and learn the basics. Please.
Or at least go back to your parallel universe.
Rule number 1: You cannot have too much exposition.
Visual storytelling is replaced by dialogue-heavy scenes, the more the better.
Rule number 2: Over-acting is better than acting.
If you are really thirsty and you drink a beer, you have to close your eyes, look to the heavens, ooh and ah, fall to your knees, and declare out loud how damn GOOD it tastes, all the while talking to yourself. You know, like in a beer commercial.
The bad news is, director Toya Sato has escaped from that parallel universe into ours, and brought this clunking, tawdry, disjointed insult to the proud tradition of Japanese cinema with him.
The story, such as it is, is that Kaiji has a huge gambling debt and his life is going nowhere. That leads him to becoming the plaything of a misanthropic multi-billionaire building a nuclear shelter using slave labour and with a penchant for life-and-death gambling games.
Not a bad premise, but utterly sunk in this execution.
If film is stories told by pictures, and the Japanese are a non-verbal culture, could someone please tell me why there is so much TALKING in this film? Kaiji crosses a narrow bridge 200 meters in the air. He looks behind to see that his friend has fallen. The audience can see he has fallen. But Kaiji tells us: "He has fallen." Endo watches a five-card game. The players play three cards, and each play is a draw. They have two cards left. We can see this, but somehow we get to hear Endo's thoughts, which tell us: "After three cards played it is a draw. It is down to the last two cards." Who exactly is this insipid narration for? Is there a retarded baboon wearing earplugs and a blindfold sitting at the back of the theatre that Sato felt the need to accommodate? I have given only two examples, but the whole film is like this. The most glaringly obvious action is either replayed, or explained verbosely by one character to another.
Characterization is practically non-existent. Kaiji is a gambler, but where he came from, how he ended up in such a rut, is never mentioned. He empathises with one of his fellow victims, but it is not clear why. At his ostensible moment of triumph, he is celebrating gambling wins and downing a beer - despite the horror of watching all of his comrades in arms falling from the aforementioned narrow bridge. He starts the movie caring only for himself, and finishes it the same way. And we know no more about him.
Endo is a gangster but seems taken by Kaiji, even though she is fully complicit in the murder and mayhem games that afflict him. It turns out she is no good, and this puts a period on the film's major failing - there is no one to like. All of the characters start out as reprehensible, and never redeem themselves. They never grow, learn, or reflect.
Plotting is flimsy. Kaiji at one point conveniently produces a magic marker to draw with, despite just being released from a dungeon. The dungeon prisoners suddenly get a TV in their cell where no one existed before. At one point, on a ship, a left-over card in the game seals Kaiji's fate. It is a huge moment story-wise, propelling us into the next sequence. But as the game starts with an even number of cards and they are discarded two at a time, it is impossible for there to be one left-over card. Lazy, ill-disciplined scripting at its worst.
Pacing is uneven to say the least. The bridge crossing takes an eternity, as Kaiji and his older pal have a sentimental outpouring about their lives so far. And yet when we come back to the job at hand - crossing the bridge - we find out that the guy on the other bridge has made no progress during the course of the interminable conversation. I mean, what was he doing all this time?
Tatsuya Fujiwara overacts furiously. His beer-drinking antics are just shameful, the worst hamming since... well, since the last TV director was allowed to make a Japanese film. Amami is usually classy, but even she can't get out of TV mode and comes across as wooden. Ken'ichi Matsuyama makes a cameo, and seems a class apart, making effective use of that menacing stare of his. Probably because he appears less, he took less direction from Sato, and therefore acts better.
Teruyuki Kagawa, usually so reliable and watchable, is dragged under by too-close close-ups, patchy pacing, and the failure to resist cranking it up a couple of notches. A better director would have gotten a better performance, one feels.
It is incredulous that with this budget and this cast Kaiji turns out to be so mind-numbingly awful. Based on a comic, with a TV director, didn't someone realise that the element 'cinema' needed to be added to the equation? Sato and friends - go to film school, and learn the basics. Please.
Or at least go back to your parallel universe.