journal features

movie review - Kamikazi Taxi

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Vancouver, 2001.05.11

This is - surprise - a Japanese flick. In Japan, there are a number of people who have immigrated from South America. These people are the children of Japanese emigrants who left Japan in the years following WWII.

One of the main characters in this movie is such an immigrant. A half-Japanese, half-Peruvian Indian, he struggles with the language and the intolerance of the Japanese. He's taken a job as a taxi driver, and on one fateful night picks up a young Yakuza lieutenant on the run. It's hard to relate any of the gangster's role without giving away the plot, so I won't discuss that.

I can say, however, that this movie can be a surprisingly subtle and graphically violent. It also wanders through many parts of Japanese life, and struggles with some of the lingering social fallout from the war. In all, very worth watching.

Recommended.

rand()m quote

Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest.

—T.S. Eliot