Sadly Over-hyped

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

This film that opened the Sabu retrospective at New York's Japan Society and was a real blast.Sabu's fourth film is a kick in the pants. It's a film that starts off with a salary man waking up in a hotel room, unsure of how he got there. He then begins to remember back... it started at the funeral...moved on the bar....then continued on past the Yakuza...I've already told you too much because as with all of Sabu's films, the plot isn't the point, its the connections to the things we don't realize that are important. I don't want to say anything about what happens but the funeral becomes one of the funniest ever put on screen and the dancing puts to shame the much heralded Tavolta/Thurmond pairing in Pulp Fiction.I really like this movie a great deal. I suspect that it's going to hang with me for a few days before I can really find out how I feel about it. Its a film that has lots of stuff going on behind it's eyes as it were.If you can find a copy or see it at some screening I suggest you do so. Its further proof that Sabu is one the best filmmakers working today.

Salaryman Takagi wakes up fully clothed in an anonymous business hotel and attempts to recall how he got there. A series of flashbacks reveal how the events that led him to this place escalated out of control. As the audience is drip-fed information on Takagi's weekend from hell, a series of hilarious set pieces ensues, along with a stinging social commentary of Japan's repressed, alcohol-dependent work-obsessed culture.Tsutsumi is masterful as the mouse that roars, ranging from cowardly in a bar scene where he opts to drink down a fag dowt, to darkly heroic in his execution of an out-of-control chinpira and his moll. The supporting cast give strong performances, especially Yasuko Matsuyuki as a femme fatal, seducing Takagi like a siren call to hell. Interestingly, Matsuyuki does not have one line in the film, but is a clearly defined character. Character actors such as the ubiquitous Naomi Nishida shine in their epigrammatic appearances.The film will have you smiling in memory of many scenes long after viewing. Takagi writing his will, prolonging the moment, was dryly amusing. Tsutumi's dance in the yakuza bar is simply hilarious. The final third, unfortunately, drags on far too long, as Sabu's sensibilities and timing seem to fail him. The moment is somewhat redeemed by the 'reveal' that is has all been a daydream, but that final stand-off flags and ultimately spoils what was shaping up to be a perfect film.Not perfect then, but better than most. The first ten minutes, especially, are a masterclass in the set-up area of screen writing. Numerous questions are posed in the sequence, with the pay-offs arriving as the film progresses. For anyone interested in contemporary Japanese fimmaking, this is simply unmissable.

I've seen this movie several times. But My favorite scenes are the ones at the .Funeral(Exploding corpse), and two bar scenes (Fortune teller, woman in white, no hands peeing, twist/ seductive slow dancing, and a bunch of yakuza).And although Takagi's(Shuichi Tsutumi) life goes a little South in the later part of the movie , I kind of wished for a better fate for him in spite of the four murders he committed(face it ,the first two were accidents). He could have ran off with either the Yakuza girl or something. Anyhow,if this were a normal movie, it probably would not been produced by Sabu(Hiroyuki Tanaka)Also of note in the music. No where does a funky song feel so out of place as in the scenes at the first bar where Takagi meets the Yakuza sexpot (I feel like I wanna get down!!!).But is it really out of place ? Can a straight laced Japanese character be able to get down with his bad self? For the uninitiated, check out the movie and see!!!

"Falling down" in Japanese: a young salaryman, utterly drunk, had murdered four people - gangsters all of them, but that's no excuse. Days later, as he wakes up in a hotel room, he has no remembrance of what happened. With his brain restarting, he begins to call up the pictures of the dreadful night. This ist the strongest part of the film, almost two third of it. The scenes in the night club, the dance with the beautiful white Yazuka bride, and his first steps becoming a mass murder, are full of magnificent ideas and pictures. The action and the atmosphere comes from Tarantino school while the minimalistic silver-blue photography resembles Kitano a lot. The problem of the film is, that he doesn't know, how to bring the story to a neat end. Shall we believe, that this harmless man kills some guys of the special police forces, which advance to his hotel room? Can we understand his behaviour after he took the chief inspector as hostage? Are these phantasies of almightiness not too much of Tarantino? Some scenes seem as if the director wants to gain minutes in order to fill the hundred minutes. The film should had come to an end, when the "tragic analysis" finished, that is when the hero noticed that the police had surrounded the building. Because of this incoherence it is not even a good movie, despite of the strengths especially in the scenery and the photography.