Crappy film

Awesome Movie

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

This movie had an impact on me like no other film had before. Two 14 year olds coming from abusive homes are forced to look at their lives and see where they plan on taking them. The main character, Yuichi Sumida, claims early in the film that he just wants to be ordinary. Keiko Shazawa happily agrees with him since she is infatuated with him. Neither of the teen's parents could care less about them. The girl's parents go as far to create a noose from which they want their daughter to commit suicide, since she is only a disappointment in their eyes. Yuichi and his mom run a boat shop which he runs on his own after she abandons him. His father shows up only to ask for money and abuse his son. The bad parenting in this film may be an exaggerated representation of Japenese culture, in how much pressure children are put under in order to succeed. The teens in this film have obviously given up on any dreams of success they may have once had. The Yakuza comes to collect the debt that Yuichi's father owes them and this pushes his mind to a point where he becomes confused and violent. After this point, the film takes a turn. The first third is filled with comedy - the scenes with Yuichi and Keiko fighting, I found the most amusing - but the second two thirds are dealing with dark subject matter. Things become more shocking and also more intriguing. Anger and that has been built up in Yuichi is let out in unhealthy, though sometimes helpful ways. He commits an act that he feels guilty about and isn't sure what to do, leading him to try to find himself in scenes that I found very powerful. The sorrow, frustration and hopelessness I saw on screen resonated with me in ways incomparable with any other works of fiction. To put it bluntly, Himizu is a coming-of-age story for angsty teens that aren't sure where their life is headed. By the way this isn't an insult, given how much I could relate.

Senseless violence, histrionic personages, forced situations repeated once and again, a pointless script plot and story, unjustified brutality, incoherent and unconnected scenes just piled up together... A bunch of personages seem to have lost any leitmotiv in their lives along with all their possessions after the Tsunami that swept away their belongings. The protagonist is the one in the neighborhood who lost less and still keeps a house and a small boat renting business, yet he is the one with a more bleak attitude towards life and his own future, something that is comprehensible on the basis that he is an adolescent with a fully broken family and a father coming home just to insult and beat him up. Basically, during the first half of the film we witness a series of violent, close to sadistic acts exerted on the protagonist, and in the second part it is time for the protagonist to exert the same violence on whoever he considers deserving of it... ¿what conclusion can we draw from all this?... none really, unless someone wants to find some overall sense to the film in the last (pathetic and ridiculous!) scene. Besides, there is not a coherent story line anywhere, we hardly ever get to know the why of particular actions in the different personages, actions that systematically stem from or lead to a completely senseless violence.The female protagonist, a classmate of the guy, is the total reverse of him; she loves him, and tries by every means to draw his attention (despite his hostile, dismissing and abusing attitude towards her), making for him things that go far beyond what can be considered reasonable. Yet some funny scenes with this female character as protagonist are the only ones in the film that can be watchable (and the only reason why I give it 2 stars instead of 1).Some pieces of classical music used pointlessly with tiresome insistence in every part of the film complete this terrible more-than-two hours movie theater experience. Please skip it.

After Love Exposure, I want to give this director's other movies a go. What a mistake, this movie stinks. How could a director who is capable of making something exciting to watching like LOVE EXPOSURE makes something horrible as HIMIZU is beyond me.I like movies that are different. This movie is different. But also very dull and boring. No one could relate to any of the characters depicted.This movies has a lot of uninteresting WTF moments that make no sense at all. I fell asleep twice watching this movie. The protagonist is depicted as mind-numbingly dull fellow. The girl is retarded. Actually all of the characters are retarded. I wonder if the radiation has something with it.I highly don't recommend this movie. What a waste of time.

While not a terrible movie, Sumida & Keiko's dystopia where- in after killing his father who beats him up in drunken rages, Sumida embarks on a campaign of violence against evil-doers demonstrates a mismanagement of the time spent on different aspects of the plot.What really occurs, is that the violence between father and son is a surrogate for violence against women done by what are essentially psychotic individuals. This is easily seen in the completely superfluous knife fight over a transit-seat being offered to a pregnant woman. Although the unthinkable does not happen, the tension is sufficient to recognize that the director is "hung-up" on portraying unspeakable violence against the women of the movie.Nonetheless, it is not an overly bloody movie, but the subtitles are not sufficient to provide a proper understanding of the scene where the partially-clad woman with Japanese insults written on her body (in Japanese) -- hings such as "pig" and "bitch", who says "I do this by choice". In other words, she invites being called a "pig" as part of being the female in her relationship, where she literally walks around with a chain on her ankle.I would not go so far as to call the movie unwatchable in its treatment of women, although there were some loud "boos" at the screening I went to, eventually there was some applause at the end. To appreciate the movie, one must come to the understanding that each and every character in the movie is not just involved in a movie about angst, but is quite literally insane, or in the language of psychiatrists, "in a deep psychosis".I would not go so far as to call the director psychotic, but rather, lacking the plot time-management skill to convince us otherwise.Unless you're a psychiatrist in a super-max prison, this movie is not escapism, and the assertion that people in Japan need a cynical criticism of the "Let's go Japan!" rebuilding mantra in their media, that the director presents, can quite safely be tossed in the trash.My advice to the director: Move to Osaka.