movie review - Brother
the journal of Michael Werneburg
This is an American/Japanese gangster flick starring Takeshi Kitano. It features Kitano as an exiled Yakuza lieutenant, and includes the gangster little brother, the brother's LA drug-dealing buddies, and a cast of hundreds from across LA's underground. The first part of the film takes place in Japan where a Yakuza war winds up with Kitano's flight to LA. The remainder chronicle's the volatile gangster's climb to power in LA's drug trade. It's a brutally violent tale, replete with representatives of the ethnically diverse city's Mexican, Chinese, Italian, Afro-American, and Japanese hoods. You come away with little sympathy for anyone in this thing, though even the cyanide pills, the executions, and betrayals don't seem all that unnatural to movie-land gangsterdom.
Recommended.