Blues Harp (1998) User Reviews

Miike does melancholy.

[squelcho · 8/10 · 31 July 2005]

I wouldn't bracket this movie with the surreal stuff that Miike has let loose on an unsuspecting public. Nor would I place it in the shootemup yakuza bloodbath series. It belongs with the reflective character pieces like Rainy Dog and Ley Lines, and has a fair bit in common with the gaijin outcast anti-heroes in City of Lost Souls.

Chuji is a victim of history and circumstance. We join him for the poignant finale of his brief, but tragic existence. He's a musical supernova in his limited beatbar universe, and a smalltime dealer in the (slightly) wider world. His life becomes entwined with an ambitious yakuza kiddie(Daisuke Ijima), whose plans are bigger than his brains. With predictably dire results. The feeling of impending doom is tempered by the almost punkish nihilism of the main players. It's Miike playing with that inevitable mortality thing again.

Beautifully underplayed, with some blatant plugs for the Japanese indie music scene, this movie doesn't set out out to shock or confuse. It limits its ambition to telling a melancholy story, and as a result, it's much closer to a righteous Kurosawa/Kitano vibe than the Black Society Trilogy.

Hiroyuki Ikeuchi is excellent as Chuji, the semi-gaijin harp player whose pappy may or may not have been a Yankee serviceman stationed in Okinawa. Or a street drunk. Or both. His mother is a prostitute. So it's fairly clear from the prologue that Chuji has had all the dubious benefits of a dysfunctional upbringing.

Ikeuchi is effortlessly convincing throughout. I hope he gets plenty of work on the basis of his performance in this very neat little drama.

Low-key

[politic1983 · 7/10 · 19 June 2018]

The intros are among some of the best pieces of cinema Takashi Miike produced around the late-Nineties and Millennium period. The brutal baseball attack to kick-off "Fudoh: The New Generation" and the film within a montage that introduces us to the "Dead or Alive" Trilogy. Coming a year earlier than the latter, 1998's "Blues Harp" also shows a whole condensed into a rock montage, with clips from throughout the film interspersed with Atsushi Okuno's performance on stage to get the octane levels up. Seeing Miike's lower-budget works as forerunners for ideas in his larger-scale pieces, "Blues Harp" is another, more minor, work that would see similar themes explored later on.

Chuji, born in Okinawa to a Japanese prostitute and African-American soldier, is a barman in a dive bar and music venue in the US navy base town of Yokosuka. A low-level drug dealer, he chances upon Kenji, an ambitious young yakuza in the alley behind the bar, saving Kenji from a beating from his rivals. For this, Kenji is eternally grateful, and chooses to lookout for Chuji as much as he can.

But Kenji is also a man out for himself, and wishes to dethrone is family head, using an affair with his wife to give him to opportunity to seize power. Chuji also sees a bright future ahead: his dabbling with a harmonica, encouraged by the house band, gets heard by a talent scout who wants to offer him a record contract, his bosses' approval pending, as well as his girlfriend announcing she is pregnant.

Things come to a head on one fateful Thursday. Yakuza (and their women's) double-crossings rife, Kenji's plans are soon thwarted and the jealousy of his younger "brother" sees him use Chuji's drug dealing past to blackmail him into being the lacky in Kenji's plans, potentially damaging his future music career, and future full stop.

While a violent film, this is not typical Miike: here the violence is more straight, compared to the more extreme and comic cases seen in his other films. At face-value, this is a fairly standard yakuza tale of backstabbing, teaching us to never trust a yakuza. But the character of Chuji, played by Kiroyuki Ikeuchi, adds a little something extra to the film.

Mixed-race, Chuji represents something of a changing face of Japan. Kenji comments that Chuji is an old-fashioned name, but his lifestyle is anything but. A more Westernised, low-level street dealer, he is a far cry from the organised, "business" face of the yakuza. An early incarnation of the slacker staple now frequent in Japanese cinema, as critiqued my Mark Schilling, he lives in an area populated by graffiti, immigrants, back streets and the homeless, and dreams of a career in blues music. Adopting a homeless, black US soldier as a surrogate father figure, he is a lost soul in an industrialised cityscape emerging from the Nineties decline.

Kenji also offers a twist on yakuza meat and drink, with his affection for Chuji more than simply friendship. Catching an early glimpse of his young rear end, Kenji's hidden homosexuality manifests in his looking out for Chuji and aggressive teeth-brushing following each sexual encounter with his boss' wife, showing a touch more subtlety from Miike.

Music is also important to "Blues Harp" with live performances essentially shown in full alongside storylines, with a mix of rock, blues and hip hop on stage at the bar where Chuji works.

But, as an earlier work in Miike's post-V-cinema career, this is a film not without its flaws. The less established cast, incorporating musicians, naturally, doesn't always mean particularly classic acting. Chuji can come across more funny than funky in his live performances, Ikeuchi perhaps overdoing his blues harp miming a little.

But typical of this era, it also sees Miike experimenting throughout, with ideas and themes that would be reprised later in his career in bigger-scale projects. As such, while not a particularly standout work, this is in some ways Miike at his best, and more low-key works such as "Blues Harp" would have been welcomed in a career that has often gone to extremes.

politic1983.blogspot.co.uk

My last pre-2000s Miike film and another fine one

[powerofberzerker · 6/10 · 7 April 2021]

Ley Lines came out in 1999 but I watched it after Rainy Dog as an end to that trilogy. Overall, I liked it very much but it had some goofy acting near the end, and the characters could have been more fleshed out. That whole ''Black Society Trilogy'' is quite good but I found this film just as good.

The acting is better than the average Miike flick and the characters function more emphatically. They are all lovable people although with many problems both from the past and yet to come. The movie has many of your standard Miikeisms with homosexuality in yakuza circles, thug druggie life, and his many ways to express symbolism. But they all work much better here than in most of his stuff. Additionally, Miike again enjoys his art of boredom scenes and creates a very realistic tone without his more genre-bending contrivances. The music shines in this film and gives it an additional touch of heart and soul which elevates the tragic aspects that come at the end. The humor was pretty low-key but effective nonetheless. Some experimental bits and scenes also worked fairly well and I always love Miike's bold refreshments in directing.

On the paper, this is yet another simple mafia tale from Miike about normal (outcasts), small people, and their struggle, but here it clicked just right. Miike knows how to make a good ending and this movie is a prime example of that.

90s Miike was truly something, as brilliant and trashy he was.

Portrayal of youth culture

[Atavisten · 7/10 · 2 June 2005]

Chuuji is half black, has a homeless father and he works in a bar. He has connections deep into the yakuza which he cares little about. He saves a girl with whom he get together with.

Ikeuchi Hiroyuki is very good as Chuuji, the protagonist that you care about in this movie. The story is a sad one with little sentimentality and told with joy so we don't get turned off it.

Miike is a promising filmmaker, but maybe he should spend some more time on each movie instead of spewing 'em out. 'Chuugoku no Chounin' suffers a little from this. Such is the case also with this movie. Its still recommended for the lead act.

Not just a great Japanese crime film; but a great crime film of rare emotional depth with a classic story of love and betrayal...

[enicholson · 10/10 · 15 January 2004]

This film had a powerful impact on me. I'm still somewhat new to the yakuza film genre, but it immediately became one of my favorite films, perhaps my favorite Takashi Miike film I have seen so far.

It doesn't really compare to Miike's more famous films because it fits more neatly in to the yakuza and crime genres than Miike's better known stylized shocker exploitation yakuza/psycho films; however, it does have a good deal of the visual style, much of the blood and carnage and some of the blistering action we are accustomed to in Miike's films. And, like most Miike films, it has a cool intro. Also, like most of Miike's best films, it has the coolest and best acting (and actors) you are likely to see in any crime film. Like we have come to expect from Miike films, it has some great mafia boss characters and one or two characters that seem like they are from outer space (though here these eccentrics are more subtle and have less screen time here than in his more famous films).

I more or less liked Miike's well-known stuff like Ichi the Killer and Dead or Alive (especially DOA's first 10 minutes or so) and I especially liked Fudoh and Audition, but I have to say I prefer this kind of film more because it has so much soul and grit and it feels real. The story has a classic feel to it like something out of the more edgy film noirs or some of the best gritty 1970s crime/druggie movies. Unlike in most any other Takashi Miike film I have seen so far, you actually care about the lead characters in this film.

Of course I won't divulge the whole story, but I set it up below. The plot is a little bit complicated, though it is one one of the best stories I have ever come across in a crime movie (my set-up below doesn't do it justice). Don't read the two paragraphs below if you prefer to know as little about the story as possible.

STORY SET-UP

Story is about a young Okinawa drug dealer named Chuji who also works at a bar that features local Japanese rock and roll bands. But Chuji is also a gifted harmonica player, which he learned to play as a young boy out of loneliness and boredom while his prostitute mother turned tricks. While helping a young and ambitious yakuza named Kenji elude the capture of the gang headed by Chuji's boss, Chuji also incidentally meets a pretty girl who later becomes his girlfriend. She, as well as one of the leaders of one of the bands performing at the bar, encourages Chuji to play harmonica with his band. After only one performance, Chuji is instantly popular at the bar for his blues harp skills. His talent later attracts the attention of a record producer. It looks like Chuji might no longer have to deal drugs, but...

Kenji, the yakuza formerly on the run, rewards Chuji for his help at eluding capture and certain execution earlier. The two become friends -- though, unbeknownst to Chuji, Kenji's affection for him is more than just friendly. But because they each work for rival gangs, and because Kenji's yakuza ambitions exceed his status and his closeted homosexuality offends certain people close to him, Kenji's life is on the line, and Chuji obliviously and unwittingly gets tangled up in a yakuza battle way over his head.

END OF STORY SET-UP

Like I started to mention earlier, the story and characters have such a classic feel to them that I wonder if there are any classic noirs or 70s crime films with similar plots. If so, I'm curious to find out what they are. But I suspect the story probably feels so classic just because it is so good. Some Miike films are confusing, often deliberately so, and I usually appreciate his narrative haphazardness. But here, unexpectedly, we're treated to something of a classic crime tale. I know I am overusing the word "classic," but by the end of the film I felt like Charles Dickens could have written the same basic plot though in a very different style and different characters of course.

I want to call it a crime masterpiece; but I feel like it's a bit premature for me to make such a declaration since I need to see some more films first -- even more Takashi Miike films since he must be one of the most prolific directors in the history of feature filmmaking. But unlike most crime movies which often tend to be flashy and filled with a lot of attitude and crammed with forgettable action, this film has an emotional depth to it that most anyone can relate to (in addition to all the cool shoot outs, etc.). Many women would like this film too because there is a really good, and very simple, love story at the center of the film that is quite sweet; and the lead female character genuinely loves and devotes herself to Chuji as he does to her as well. This is how young love should be. This film busts the gut and excites the senses; but it also rattles the soul and pierces the heart. Many of the best Japanese filmmakers frequently seem to have a talent for combining on screen action and physicality with a depth of emotion and feeling that seems rare in filmmakers (and screenwriters) in other nations. Takashi Miike struts his stuff here in this regard. A film like this reminds me of why I love Japanese movies so much and why I think Japanese film in general is a treasure chest still waiting to be discovered -- maybe even by many Japanese people themselves as well.

I am not quite yet ready to call it a crime masterpiece. I at least need to see some more Takashi Miike films first. But damn if I really want to call it a crime masterpiece. Incidentally, it might even be a great story about love too. Nah - Takashi Miike couldn't be capable of a great love story even if it does have gangsters, guns and bullets. Could he?

Another masterpiece from Takashi Miike

[Wetbones · 10/10 · 26 April 2002]

Takashi Miike´s 1998 film BLUES HARP is not as outrageous as FUDOH or DEAD OR ALIVE and not as disturbing and shocking as AUDITION or VISITOR Q. It isn´t a gory bloodbath like ICHI THE KILLER. It is a Yakuza film very much along the lines of CHINESE MAFIA SEASON, RAINY DOG and LEY LINES.

(SPOILERS!) The two main protagonists are Chuji, a half-Black and Kenji, an upstart Yakuza. Chuji works at a club and one night saves Kenji´s life when he is being chased by rivaling gangsters. The two become friends. But there is trouble on the horizon. Kenji conspires to replace his boss with the help the boss´s mistress. And Kenji´s bodyguard becomes murderously jealous of Kenji´s love for Chuji (the film is anything but subtle with the homoerotic overtones). I won´t tell anything more but the ending is both beautiful and tragic. (END SPOILERS)

BLUES HARP is a really great film. I was once again amazed how many of my favorite films are from Miike-san. BLUES HARP has now joined them. The actors are great, the cinematography is gorgeous (once again by HANA BI cinematographer and longtime Miike collaborator Hideo Yamamoto) and most importantly what happens on-screen feels REAL. You get the feeling that real people lead these kinds of life all the time and (in variations) all over the world. And even though we are dealing with criminals here Miike portrays them with what seems like genuine affection, even love while never, NEVER, glorifying the Yakuza lifestyle. One gets the feeling he really knows what he is making films about and considering his past that is most probably true. Whatever Miike does in the future I´ll be there and every film lover should keep an eye on this man.