Really Surprised!

A Brilliant Conflict

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

you will be watching a man who jerks off to her daughter go mad for 2 hours please avoid if you like yourself or your surroundings. needs to be 5 sentences long. needs to be 5 sentences long. needs to be 5 sentences long. needs to be 5 sentec long, well i guess you got it. i guess you got it. don't watch, bye.

I read some of the other reviews, I've just watched it on Shudder and I thought there was a lot of (admittedly very dry and dark) humour; some characters do very very unpleasant things (I really don't think this is a spoiler) but I found myself laughing as well as wincing during the 2 hours of this film. (Having said that, I did pause the film about a half-hour in, turned the lights back on and watched 10 minutes of the Golf Open highlights on BBC2 just to have a little break from some of the unremitting bleakness).Plenty of synopses in other reviews, you've already read at least one.Beautifully filmed, loads of excellent visual loveliness amongst the brutality, soundtrack is very good and used to help identify the (frequent) flashbacks (nothing wrong with challenging the viewer to KEEP UP).If you like 'Old Boy', 'Bad Lieutenant' and 'Mad Detective' I think you will really enjoy this film. I did say enjoy. I thought it was excellent.

I think I would've liked reading the source material for this movie. Seems like a good read. The actual movie on the other hand, it was a bit of a hit and a miss for me. I liked the colors, the great acting, and the fact that Kanako's dark secret wasn't something I saw coming. However, I felt like it started out great and then kind of dragged on a little bit on the second half just to end as a totally confused mess. Too many characters and too many sub-plots all of a sudden. I think with a little bit of editing and focusing more on some of the characters (like the bullied boys who were in love with Kanako, or the thug girl) the movie would've been a bit more interesting. If you want to watch something violent and gory, with a decent story and a dark twist I would recommend it. It's pretty unique. I wouldn't buy it, but it was entertaining, a decent watch.

Well, the first impression I had of this movie was like I was watching a Tarantino's work. The opening sequence, as well as the car of Fujishima, reminded me also the Bronson's era action movies often depicting a violent cop as leading character. And this peculiarity made me think as well to the first work of Kitano. So, we have a theme well developed in and outside Japan. But if lonely and abandoned policemen are often depicted as somehow cool, here we have a character that has terrible features and so we cannot side with him. If at the beginning we could understand his pain for the lost of the daughter, the more the movie goes on the more we hate him. And we should say that the real cause of this tragedy is him. Or maybe his blood that is shared by her daughter too as is said in the end by Fujishima himself. Yes, because her daughter too switches from being depicted as a young victim of drug and bullyism to a devil that lead people to death. So a movie that destroys the clichés of classical action movies we named above to which is still a great debtor. Considering then the filming the dark Nakajima's style- yet developed in Confessons- made the atmosphere heavy as the feelings of the lost boys who stand again as the main characters. About music the choices are so good to make feel unease. Think to the psychedelic trance music played at the party or Dean Martin's ending song that adds to this movie a grotesque tone. This last one, then, is also the title of a novel by Natsuo Kirino with the main character very close to Kanako. Overall I consider it a good movie with however just one missing point. That's to say reason of this evil in Nakajima family. I think Nakajima should have explained it more clearly why the father had became so rude and so her daughter. Thinking to a simply cursed bloodline as Macbeth is a too much easy. Finally I found interesting to watch it this year since the snow scene brought me to memory some scenes of "The Hateful Eight" by Tarantino. But also "Old Boy" by Park Chang-wook. Two other masterpieces of violence. Without mercy.