A slow witted garage attendant travels to Okinawa to buy a gun when his friend gets into trouble with the local Yakuza. Even by Kateshi Kitano's understated standards, Boiling Point is a very ponderous affair. It has all the usual elements; the stoic but beautiful direction, the wide streak of very black humour and
collection of oddball characters set within the world of violent men but to be honest, it only really gets going once Kitano himself appears on the screen. His obnoxious, sexually ambiguous psychotic gangster is easily the best thing about the film and it's a real shame he isn't in it more. The other actors all acquit themselves quite well, and it shows this collection of men used to getting their own way through violence are little more than a bunch of emotionally retarded, spoilt children with guns but in the end, when Takeshi isn't on the screen it feels like screen time wasted. Not his best, but it's still an amusing look into the life of a Japanese gangster but I'd begin somewhere else if you're looking for a starting point into Beat Takeshi's work.
June 30, 2008
