Gonin

• Director: Takashi Ishii
• AMG Rating:
• Genre: Crime
• Movie Type: Crime Thriller, Gangster Film
• Themes: Yakuza, Unlikely Criminals, Fighting the System
• Release Year: 1995
• Country: JP
• Run Time: 109 minutes

Plot

Get Carter meets Heidegger in this slick, two-fisted gangster epic brimming with furtive sex and shocking violence. The film centers on five poster-boys of Japan's post-bubble economic malaise: Bandai (Koichi Sato), the owner of a once popular nightclub who's up to his fashionable lapels in debt to the yakuza; the gay extortionist (Masahiro Motoki) who loves him; Ogiwara (Naoto Takenaka of Shall We Dance fame), a downsized salaryman on the brink of mental collapse; an drug addict ex-police detective just out of stir (Jimpachi Nezu); and failed prize-fighter turned spastic pimp (Kippei Shiina). Each has a beef with the yakuza, most particularly Bandai, who is daily taunted and threatened by the unruly thugs. He organizes the motley crew and raids a yakuza office, and not only manages to make off with almost a hundred million yen but humiliates the thugs in front of their syndicate boss. In retaliation, the mob hires a hitman (Takeshi Kitano) who sports an eyepatch and works with ruthless efficiency, killing the five -- and those closest to them -- one by one without pity or remorse. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Review

An unflinching gaze into the abyss, Gonin is a savage, stylish, and thoroughly absorbing work that starts as a crime thriller but morphs into a jet black exploration of death, loss, and meaning. The film's gangster flick set up -- a quintet of disenfranchised losers take out a yakuza office-- dispenses with genre formula by the second act: there are no explosions, no likeable characters, and no cathartic confrontations. Instead, there is impending, inescapable doom. As the mob's hitman bears down on the five like a wrathful god, their attempts to shelter their loved ones from their misdeeds inevitably leads to their demise. Their plight is reduced to a horrible clarity: either die with guns ablazing or die with a bullet in the back. Like the more famous works of Quentin Tarantino -- Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs -- this film features violence designed to jar the most jaded of audiences. Yet while the center of Tarantino's films lies in an ironic wink and nod, the center of Takashi Ishii's opus can be found in a heartfelt lust for death pushed to an extreme. Like by-standers watching a car wreck, the audience comes to share the director's dark bloodlust: the question is not will the characters die, but how. Gonin thrills and unnerves while standing as an exuberant celebration of the death impulse. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Cast

Toshiyuki Nagashima; Jinpachi Nezu - Hizu; Koichi Sato - Bandai; Beat Takeshi Kitano; Masahiro Motoki; Naoto Takenaka - Ogiwara; Kazuya Kimura; Megumi Yokoyama; Makiko Watanabe

Credit

Teru Yamazaki - Art Director, Takashi Ishii - Director, Akimasa Kawashima - Editor, Goro Yasukawa - Songwriter, Yasushi Sasakibara - Cinematographer, Kazuyoshi Okuyama - Producer, Taketo Niitsu - Producer, Takashi Ishii - Screenwriter

Similar Movies

City on Fire; Reservoir Dogs; The Yakuza; Branded to Kill; Sonatine; Fireworks; Sewaroutoiru; Tokyo Mafia: Wrath of the Yakuza; Fulltime Killer; The Mission

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