Brother

Director: Takeshi Kitano
Year Released: 2000
Rating: 1.0

Takeshi's a real enigma for me - either I love or hate his newest outing, and there's no in-between - and Brother, another gangster-Yazuka film, seriously takes a wrong turn, recycling his other movies into yet another off-beat meditation on violence. This time, however, I just wasn't into it - the film seems like a coy in-joke that I simply couldn't "get," and was more amused than irritated by the ridiculous display of graphic violence (nary a scene ends that two or three people don't get shot or maimed in some way). Less poetic than Fireworks, and at the opposite end of the spectrum than the painfully sad Kikujiro, it crashes and burns with another Takeshi work I didn't care for, Sonatine.