Takeshi Kitano - Hana-bi (1997)

A superstar and cultural icon in his native Japan, Takeshi "Beat" Kitano has conquered more than one medium, but he is best known in the West for his remarkable films. Among those, Fireworks is the clear favorite, a taut and enigmatic noir that fluctuates between perfect stillness and savage eruptions of violence. (Editorial Reviews-Amazon.com)




Nishi is a cop whose wife is slowly dying of Leukemia. One of his partners gets shot on the job and is confined to a wheel chair for the rest of his life and becomes suicidal. Nishi, feeling guilt over his partners accident, tries to help him in any way he can. At the same time, Nishi leaves the police force to spend more time with his dying wife. However, in order to do the right things for those he loves, Nishi must do wrong things. Spiraling deeper into desperation and slowly building up to tragedy. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119250/plotsummary)




Kitano plays a cop named Nishi, a determinedly impassive man whose face occasionally ripples with an involuntary tic, hinting at the explosive but contained forces within. Nishi's wife (Kayato Kishimoto) is dying of leukemia, a disease that already killed their child, and he cares for her with a shattering tenderness. While on a stakeout, Nishi takes a break to check in on her, and while he's gone his partner is crippled and another officer is killed. With death hovering at home and a score to settle outside, Kitano's hero sets off on an isolated course to seek justice. (Editorial Reviews-Amazon.com)




Few filmmakers have understood as well as Kitano has here the irresistible draw of a thriller told with a moody calmness, with an eye toward graceful construction and rigorous composition. The careful, unhurried dispensing of story information also helps keep the focus on Nishi's warrior soul, on his mysterious capacity for the extremes of gentleness and brutality. The story here is the way one man can be the sum of such bold contradictions, and a great story it is. (–Tom Keogh-Editorial Reviews-Amazon.com)




The seventh and most sombre work from the Japanese director Takeshi Kitano. The fact that his movies-like his TV appearances, radio shows, and everything else-have become a cult should not be held against the man; he has carved out his own style, clipped and elliptical, and that is rare enough these days. In the new film, which he also wrote and co-edited, Kitano plays Nishi, a policeman on the slide. Some colleagues were shot on duty, and, rightly or wrongly, Nishi takes the blame.




Meanwhile, his wife is dying, so he takes her away for a country vacation, which he finances by robbing a bank; despite all the cops and gangsters on their trail, the two of them enjoy a last, almost wordless idyll. No one but Kitano would have thought to combine cold spasms of violence with such a tender portrait of marriage, or to tinge the whole tale with black comedy; if you can take that mixture, and if you can follow the sly complications of Kitano's chronology, you will not be disappointed. (-Anthony Lane-The New Yorker )