Nishi is in trouble. He was fired from the police after a disastrous incident in which a criminal shot three of his colleagues, leaving one, Horibe, in a wheelchair; his child died; his wife, Miyuki, is dying from a terminal illness; and on top of all, he is in debt to the Yakuza, from whom he borrowed money to pay for his wife's therapy. Fed up with everything, and figuring he cannot lose anything anymore, Nishi uses a police uniform to rob a bank, return the money to the Yakuza, and then go away with Miyuki on a trip one last time. As the gangsters interupt him, he kills them. At a ski resort, Nishi kills even more of the Yakuza. Finally, he has one last nice moment with Miyuki on the beach, before he shoots her and commits suicide himself.
One of Takeshi Kitano's most famous films, "Hana-bi" is a dark, bitter and lingering meditation about a man who cannot escape depression and death: at times emotional, especially in the very touching ending, but it alienates the viewers through its sudden outbursts of bizarre violence and cruelty, and several heavy handed elegy elements (the too long sequence of paintings of animals with flowers instead of their heads). Its story and theme are reminiscent of "Dead Man" and "The American Friend", but Kitano stubbornly refuses to treat the film's structure in conventional means, and thus the whole narration "floats" freely between flashbacks and random episodes. Violent moments (Nishi stabs a criminal's eye with chopsticks) are followed by gentle ones (Nishi ignites a firework, nothing happens, so he goes to see what happened, and then the fireworks explode into his face, causing his terminally-ill wife to finally laugh), though Kitano seems to be forcing his "macho" persona a little bit too much: the scene on the beach where a man randomly starts insulting Miyuki for pouring sea water into her flowers seems to be just there for the dominant Kitano to "come to the rescue" and kick the man into water. Assembled out of static shots, with unusual tableaux framing, crafting a contrasting blend out of minimalism and action scenes, "Hana-bi" speaks about the contradictions in the world, in which bad things happen to good people, and how their suffering cannot be resolved. For all of its puzzling or questionable solutions and directions, "Hana-bi" has inspiration at times, which gives it spark: in one sequence, a Yakuza draws his pistol at Nishi, but Nishi then puts his own finger on the hammer, thereby blocking the firearm from shooting.
Grade:++
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