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movie review - Fireworks

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

This is a Japanese movie about a cop who loses his way during a bad patch. His five-year-old child is dead, his wife is struggling, and then cops start getting shot in an investigation of the Yakusa. One young colleague dead, his partner ("Horibe") confined to a wheelchair, and his wife ailing in a hospital, our man loses his job and begins a new life.

With a solemn, immobile expression, Kitano stolidly plunges into a life of debt to the gangsters he once pursued, and tries to take care for his loved ones. It doesn't end well, but along the way the cop, his wife, and his partner find their own flavours of peace.

Along the way, there's a good deal of artistic interludes as the crippled Horibe becomes a painter. The montages presented in that way foretell the outcome of the others' journey.

Recommended.