Fireworks (1997)

Takeshi Kitano has created one of the most beautiful and powerful works in cinema. A true artist in the best sense, Kitano mixes stunning imagery, a beautiful score and moving performances to help remind us why we love the movies. His use of stillness and sparse dialogue imbues each shot with beauty and power. His bursts of violence and expert use of editing create some of the most gorgeous and breathtaking shots ever seen. Kitano has mastered "emptiness" intrinsic in works of great art and anyone interested in possibly the most talented person working in film today needs to check out this brilliant film.

Fmovies: I Recently picked this film up on DVD having recognised Takeshi Kitano in Battle Royale. I Thought at best it would be Moderatly entertaining. I was so Wrong.... This piece of work (directed and starring Takeshi himself) is without a doubt the Most Enchanting Magical Compelling Moving film i have ever had the pleasure of watching. The Imageary in the film is powerful and is backed up by a moving story. Takeshi plays a tough Tokyo cop who is ruthless on the beat, but obviously calm and gentle around his terminally ill wife. When His Partener is Paralysed in an attack he Realises lifes to short so he Decides to Take his wife around japan letting her see and do everything she ever wanted to do. there is not much dialoge between takeshi and his wife but the emotions are played out superbly with brilliant performances from both Of them. The movie grips you and doesnt let go right up untill the Shocking Conclusion. The film is just perfect and is a work of art in itself as a visually stunning and charachtor driven piece of perfect film. I Love it

Kitano's Hana-bi is something quite special, a film where images of violence and beauty are juxtaposed. The violence is deadly, but certainly not gratuitous or pointless. The beauty is the love story, the happiness between a cop and his wife.

There are 3 main stories in the picture, each one given the time it deserves. The film is beautiful to watch, the camera work is slick and amazing.

The direction is faultless and no frame is wasted. The film's images speak out, they are very powerful. The long silences add so much to the film, the director really knew what he was doing.

The screenplay is almost in the shadow of the awe-inspiring images, but does give the picture a deserving foundation!

The performances are 101% perfect, very authentic!

The film's musical score is beautiful, it feels very isolated from the images which only adds to the raw ambience, it's perfect!

This is a Japanese masterpiece, see it in wide-screen!

Fireworks fmovies. Hana-bi (AKA: Fireworks) is written and directed by Takeshi Kitano. It stars Kitano, Kayoko Kishimoto, Ren Osugi and Susumu Terajima. Music is by Joe Hisaishi and cinematography by Hideo Yamamoto.

Yoshikata Nishi (Kitano) is a loose cannon police detective who quits the force after a tragic incident results in his partner, Horibe (Osugi), being confined to a wheelchair. His retirement brings him the time to care more for his seriously ill wife Miyuki (Kishimoto). Nishi can find no peace, though, more so as he has borrowed money from the Yakuza to pay for his wife's needs, and they are growing impatient for the repayment...

Very early in Kitano's superb slice of Japanese neo-noir there is a piece of graffiti on the wall, it says "Drop Dead", while Hisaishi's music is a devilish accompaniment to the scene. It's ominous and foreboding, setting the tone for what is to follow. Pic is deliberately paced, beautifully so, with the opening nonlinear approach and scattergun shifts in time adding a sort of psychological maelstrom to the impending narrative darkness.

Yet to suggest it as a perpetually bleak picture is doing it a small disservice, for Kitano (himself working from a damaged psyche that occurred in real life) has this adroit eye for poetic beauty and human tenderness that marries up with bursts of violence and emotionally shattering passages of play. And it works brilliantly, with stabs of humour also filtering in via the outer frames.

Nishi the character is a force of nature and a walking - brooding - contradiction, a man pained behind his sunglasses, his expressionless visage amazingly still saying so much. When he explodes the impact is doubly strong, mainly because dialogue is so sparse, but the interwoven visuals - very much a Kitano speciality - strike an almighty chord for the story. To which we edge towards the finale, which unsurprisingly brings beauty and infinite sadness.

Unfussy camera work, sabre sharp editing (Kitano & Yoshinori Oota), elegiacal musical arrangements, art, kites and Kitano's intense performance, this rounds out as film making greatness. In fact, a masterpiece. 10/10

"Hana-Bi" is well-known as being Kitano's most critically acclaimed and iconic film to date, and with good reason. Despite a backlog of excellent films ("Violent Cop", "Sonatine", "A Scene By The Sea", etc), the reason "Hana-Bi" stands out as arguably the finest is that it so beautifully captures a personal time in Kitano's life and blends some of the more eloquent features of his persona not heavily represented in his other works. That title alone; "Hana-Bi" (In Japanese, combining 'fireworks' with 'sunflower') represents an almost poetic change in Kitano cinema, conveying a combination of sub-meanings and representations making the film strongly multi-layered with many possibilities for interpretation.

Kitano gives one of the best performances in his career as Nishi, the hardened cop looking after his dieing wife. Despite his stone-cold exterior and tendencies to explode in a violent rage, he is nonetheless a weak, broken, and tired man, haunted by some colleague's recent deaths and injuries and daunted by his wife's nearing death. Kitano is able to convey such an emotional stretch with sincerity, making this 'man of few words' one who the audience nevertheless bonds with throughout the film.

The supporting players are excellent. Kitano regulars; Susumu Terajima and Ren Osugi give exceptional performances as troubled men in an emotionally crumbling world. Osugi, in particular, plays the disabled Detective Horibe with such intensity and unfathomable depth. The numerous scenes of Horibe seated infront of Kitano's token sea-view, staring silently with Joe Hisaishi's fantastic score soaring over the top conveys more emotion and moves the audience to tears in a way words never could. It is this which makes Kitano such an incredible director, of not just Japan, but contemporary cinema as well. His dialogue is irregular, yet powerful, and his distinctive taste of visual style combined with beautiful music and emotionally rich characters creates further emotional intensity within film, powerful cinema which is undoubtedly absent in recent Hollywood works.

I have read that Kitano films are an acquired audience taste, and not suited to everyone. That maybe true with more shocking films such as "Violent Cop", but if you've not yet experienced the undeniable magic of a Kitano film, where better to start than the very best? It is certainly a film which needs to be viewed many times, as although the first time will leave you stunned, watching the film further allows you to notice more subtle qualities, as well as experience the film again.

In closing, I hope that wider audiences will experience the power of Kitano's work, and in particular, "Hana-Bi" It is a film unlike any other you will see, and no review can do it justice. You must see it for yourselves.

It's lyrical poetry: sensitive, eloquent, visual, hard and soft edges simultaneously, and sparing dialog. There's no need to tell all -- all is conveyed in the paintings presented, in the words spoken by supporting characters, in facial expressions and gestures. It's minimal -- nothing's gratuitous. The story is told mostly visually, unhurried, not even a hold-up scene -- that feels leisurely, too.

It's a story about a cop, miles apart from Hollywood commercial productions. The treatment writer-director Kitano delivered is unlike any seen before. The central character, Nishi, he has guts to live or to die. "He's a darn good cop," Horibe his partner confirmed. (Horibe, whose poignantly restrained performance by Ren Osugi, is more than just a supporting role in the film). Nishi has two close partners: one (Tanaka) died in action and left a widow, the other crippled in action and confined to a wheelchair. His wife Miyuki (a wonderfully quiet performance from Kayoko Kishimoto) is in the hospital; she's been ill for two years; their daughter died earlier. These details are given to us through casual conversations from supporting characters and flashback memories reflecting Nishi's constantly attentive mind in spite of his mostly blank face.

He's a caring man. But when he is ignited, incensed by injustice or anyone's action or words that get in his way, his reaction is the other extreme of his subdued gentleness inside: an unhesitating steady strike or continuous multiple blows, or "emptying his bullets into a corpse." He has a lot of pent-up emotions ready to explode. Nishi is an honorable man; he felt responsible for the misfortunes that occurred to his two partners. Perhaps it's guilt; he has to do something to amend the situation. There are crime depictions, including Yakuza related segments. His physical reactions to thugs are unflinching to the point of brutal yet they are essentially graphic -- at times in powerful silence.

He's a pensive man -- we can tell he's constantly thinking. There are occasional comic relieving pauses: we see him taking a moment and even breaking into a smile, e.g., when he beckons to play ball with the two workers on the street while at a stake out; his brief exchange with the junkyard owner was revealing. It's all paced in good measure.

It's a quiet film yet strong and deep, filled with human frailties and vulnerable situations. The relationship between he and his wife is beyond words. There are little mutual gestures between the two of them -- so much is expressed silently. Sometimes it's straight to the point short questions from Nishi to his wife -- and this could be delivered to us in voice-overs. The camera gives us serene scenic landscapes: seaside view with a horizon -- waves rolling in being a repeated theme; snow scenes; a temple with a big bell and a few wandering cats. It also embraces the paintings and still lifes (e.g., a wooden puzzle game and two dessert plates on a table), giving us deliberate meaningful close-ups. In HANA-BI, silence speaks louder than effects of any kind.

The film touches on aspects of life and living -- relationships of working partners, husband and wife, and being human. It's a canvas Kitano thoughtfully creatively painted on film -- broad strokes, little poignant details here and there, vibrant solid colors and imageries. Words are sparse. Simple and yet not at all simple. It could be evident that perhaps he did it all for love? His love f