R E V I E W S

Brother  (2001)

Starring: Omar Epps, Takeshi Kitano, James Shigeta, Claude Maki
Director: Takeshi Kitano
Rating: R

Studio: Sony Pictures Classics

Review Posted: 5.22.01

Rating: 4/4

By Sara M. Fetters.

"Powerful, Compelling and Masterfully Constructed"

Takeshi Kitano is a legend in the Japanese film industry. He’s the Clint Eastwood of the Asian Islands, except that unlike his squinty American counterpart, he’s not content just acting in and directing many of his films. Not only does Kitano wear those two hats, he also shows up in chapeaux in the colors of producer, writer and editor. In his spare time, he also writes music, poetry and does the occasional painting (some of those paintings can be found in his stunning 1997 film Fireworks). To top things off, in 1994 he was involved in a terrible motorcycle accident that nearly 
took his life. No slouch, this Takeshi Kitano, that’s for sure.

Now his 2000 film Brother has made the trip over the Pacific and finally landed on these shores. In truth, it’s his first partly American financed film. But, just because he’s come to Hollywood doesn’t mean this maverick has lost any of his edge or toned down his quirky, laconically violent tendencies to reach a mass audience. Don’t be fooled - Brother is a tough, violent, emotionally jarring and bleakly funny look at the breeding of violence and its terrible aftertaste. It’s also the best movie I’ve seen so far this year.

Kitano, working under his acting name of “Beat” Takeshi, is Japanese mobster Aniki Yamamoto. After the head of his Yakuza family is brutally executed by a rival gang, Aniki must flee to the Los Angeles to escape his own death and 
also save the life a trusted friend. Carrying with him a beat-up old leather bag, he searches out his college-student brother Ken (Claude Maki) while meeting with various cultural challenges during his first few days in 
LA (he tips the hotel maid $100 who comically leaves him a note telling him he needn’t do such things).

Unbeknownst to Aniki, Ken is no longer in school. Instead, he and his low-rent group of friends (including a sublime Omar Epps) sell drugs under a bridge for the neighborhood crime family. Only in town for two days and unable to escape his own past tendencies, Aniki brutally takes over the neighborhood drug trade with snake-like precision with his brother’s ragged group looking on in shock. Soon he molds the group into a citywide cartel, his own personal Yakuza-like creation, and the money pours in for all 
involved.

The beauty of this film is the way it handles so many larger issues in such brief, painterly strokes. The film moves gracefully shifting time and place, character and motivation, circumstance and penalty with equal parts panache, subtlety and pure directorial skill. The violence in this film 
comes in quick, staccato like shots of adrenaline and yet are never played for any sort of visceral enjoyment or reaction. The film explores in multi-layered depths at how violence begets violence and at how this cycle, once started, is nearly impossible to break.

In the end, it’s not the bullet-ridden corpses that garner the most emotional response, it’s the quieter moments that hit the hardest. A brother’s punch to a younger sibling; the look on a young punks face as he witnesses his first hit; a paper airplane thrown from a roof spiraling slowly to the Earth; a doll hung from a doorknob with a single bullet hole through the forehead; one last jump shot at an indoor court; a note left to a surviving friend. Brother’s strengths lie in all and many more of these quiet moments, shrewdly blended together and guaranteed to linger long after the end credits roll.

Brother is not an easy movie by any means. Kitano’s talent is obvious but his challenge to an audience’s attention span may not translate broadly this side of the ocean. That’s too bad because his films go far beyond the typical Hollywood prattle. While the studios churn out brain-numbing swill 
such as The Mummy Returns which play to such a low denominator that one gets depressed just thinking about it, it’s hard to imagine a though provoking, tough-minded film receiving a single screen to play upon here in the U.S.

And yet, here it is playing across the country throughout the summer. More than likely, you’re going to have to track it down to actually see it, but that search is well worth the effort. Brother is unlike any other movie made so far this year. In a year where only independent, foreign and animated films have stood out from the pack, this one is by far the cream of the crop.

TOP