Brother, directed by Takeshi Kitano, starring Takeshi Kitano and Omar Epps.
Takeshi Kitano is a Japanese filmmaker, actor, TV personality and comedian; outside of Japan he is known only through his films, his most known is HANA-BI, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1997.
There is a long tradition in Hollywood of importing talent from other countries, at one time or another directors were imported from Germany, Italy, England and The Three China’s (Mainland, Taiwan & Hong Kong); after HANA-BI’s success they wanted Japan’s latest international director, Takeshi Kitano.
The record of imported directors has been mixed, some thrived in Hollywood making commercially successful films but of little importance, others tried to have it both ways and fell in the abyss. Most of them make the one film and then pack and go back home, this has been the case with Takeshi Kitano and his film Brother.
Kitano directed, wrote and starred in the film (like most of his previous films); the production was a partnership between Kitano’s company and Sony Film, the budget at $12 million was small compared to the average Hollywood film. The American actors were little known at the time.
Kitano plays the role of a disgraced Yakuza boss, Yamamoto, who escapes death and goes to America where his birth-brother lives, the young man lives by selling dope on the streets of L.A., Yamamoto starts to take over the whole gang-landscape by applying Yakuza methods and sensibilities; Omar Epps plays his black lieutenant, Denny.
The takeover goes up from the lowest level of the drugs distribution network, it starts with the Black gangs then the Mexican, Vietnamese, Japanese, Russian, etc. all these different gangs are amalgamated and made into a brotherhood, similar to the Yakuza clans where higher members are big brothers to low level members. This idea of brotherhood unites gangs that before wouldn’t have trusted each other. The only gang to give serious resistance, not only to the take over but also to the idea of uniting with the others is the Japanese.
The rise stops when it reaches the highest level of the criminal network: The Italian Mafia. A gang war ensues that destroys the amalgamated gang, due to treason from the inside, Yamamoto tries to save his birth-brother who goes on his own and gets killed; at the end Yamamoto saves the live of Denny, who embraced the idea of brotherhood and remained loyal to Yamamoto, and dies in a shootout with the Mafia at a highway diner.
The film’s style is very similar to Kitano’s other work, very little dialogue, moments of tranquillity followed by moments of extreme violence, tragic end, etc.
This film is thoughtful, funny, entertaining, tragic, well written, well directed, well acted and simply a good film. It will surprise no one that it tanked in the box office, was hated by the ‘intellectual’ reviewers and mostly ignored by the cinema-going public and press.
The film is thoughtful because it has an idea behind it (missed by every review I’ve read), it’s funny because there are bits of pure comedy in it (after all Kitano is a comedian), it’s entertaining because it has a plot and a story arc, it’s tragic because the hero dies at the end and his ideal vision is destroyed (recurring theme in Kitano’s films), it’s well written because it does all this and it mixes Japanese and American gangster films traditions, it’s well directed because Kitano is a very good director, it’s well acted because the actors have something to work with and, finally, it’s a good film because it’s very rare, nowadays, to find a film that has all the above.
After the film flopped at the box office and got panned by the reviewers (quite disingenuously) Kitano expressed some disaffection at the result. This might be a reaction to the negativity or a result of interference in the final cut from the American partners and compared to his Japanese work it might not be the best, but that would be a wrong comparison. To appreciate the film’s worth we should compare it to other American films and not Japanese films.
The fact that Kitano did not adapt himself to the American film industry and film making standards is what really upset the reviewers, who despite their formal independence have a symbiotic relationship with the industry as a whole, they only point out the really bad films in order to better market the industry as a whole. Kitano’s failure to adapt to the industry meant the same reviewers who praised him after HANA-BI panned him after Brother.
Ang Lee’s first English-language film was Sense & Sensibility (a very good film), John Woo made Hard Target (a very bad film), very different films but both plots could have been done by a Western director; by contrast Brother could only have been done by a non-Western, Hollywood imported style but got, instead, substance.
