Review: Takeshi Kitano's Boiling Point.

Boiling Point is a crime film directed Takeshi Kitano.

The film revolves around loser Masaki, a boring member of a losing baseball team managed by ex-yakuza Iguchi, who gets beat up by local yakuza, which has Masaki and a random friend team up to get guns in Okinawa.

I did not like Boiling Point.

It's the most Kitano film to ever Kitano, it's exactly what I thought Brother (my first Kitano film) would be like. And you know, I do like Kitano, he's a really funny comedian and a great director but I really did not like this film.

This film is like a prototype Kikujiro. Both films feature long drawn out scenes that focus on the characters and less on the story, but where this film fails is that none of it really made sense to me.

Sure, I liked the vibe of the film, which I've seen described as "Meeting the worst people during a night out drinking" by a guy on letterboxd and I do agree, and I do think this film is very beautifully shot, but this film was just so boring.

And I get it, Kitano films are usually meant to be absurd and boring, but it didn't have the natural absurdity his films usually did, it felt forced.

And most of the film's boringness comes from the characters, outside of Iguchi, I didn't like most of the characters and I definitely didn't Masaki at all.

Yeah he's supposed to be the "boring lame guy who ends up encounter an insane life of crime" and I like that character type it's really interesting, but I found Masaki as no more than a one sided plank of wood.

And Kitano's character....I interpreted Uehara as a non romanticized portrayal of a yakuza, he's a vile scummy piece of shit who abuses everyone around him like his sworn brother and especially his girlfriend, driving her to the point of tears and anger through his actions.

And in the beginning, I thought Uehara was an interesting and decently written evil character, an interesting take on the yakuza character type, and his character did creep/disturb me from time to time, but as the film went on, Uehara just got more comically evil and I could only cheer when he was finally taken out of the picture.

Maybe it was intentional for him to be this unlikable, maybe I was meant to cheer for him getting killed, who knows what goes in Kitano's head.

If anything, I did like how the film never picks up energy. It stays slow and boring, and it never becomes intense or hyper or super energetic, and I liked that a lot. For the first hour of the film I did genuinely enjoy it, I enjoyed the confusion, the long drawn out scenes that focused on effectively nothing, the 10 minutes of uninterrupted baseball, the lack of music that only made the awkward parts more awkward, and I did like Uehara as a villain, but by the end it only felt like a bore of a final 36 minutes.

I did like the twist ending, though. I like it when Kitano flips the film upside down by the end of it.

I would like to emphasize I did not hate this film, nor is it a bad film, I just didn't like it. I didn't enjoy it a whole lot, it's not a film for me and I'm open to a new perspective on the film from someone who did like it. Maybe I was too harsh on it.

If you like Takeshi Kitano, slowish burn films, or want a very low stakes crime film that doesn't rely on adrenaline or high octane, I would recommend this film.

That's all for now, Love and Peace!