Hana-bi

Plot:
Detective Nishi is bitter when he learns that his wife Miyuki is terminally ill and his partner Horibe was shot and now tied to a wheelchair. Horibe wants to become a painter, but doesn't have money for that. To help him and a young police widow whose husband was shot dead during an arrest, he borrows money from yakuza. After that he buys an old car, paints it as a police car, and, dressed in uniform, singlehandedly robs a bank. With the money he goes on a final farewell journey together with his wife. - Anonymous

Comment:
I've been shocked, amused, touched and pleasantly surprised by this weird japanese movie which is somewhat out of the standard rules of current movies. All the praises should probably go to Takeshi Kitano who is the director, writer, editor, main actor and even artist painter!

The japanese word 'hana-bi' which means 'fireworks' but literally 'flower of fire', summarizes very well the characteristic of the movie where poetry and violence are mixed up in a rather effective way. While the various naif paintings shown throughout the whole movie give a very stylish aspect to some parts of the story, the many violent scenes, featuring lots of gore, killings and rudeness, keep the rhythm sustained and sometimes provides a few moments of fun.

The story is about a detective, Nishi, who feels responsible of the death of one of his colleagues and the paralysis of another. Moreover, his wife suffers from leukaemia and she hasn't much time left to live. Nishi tries in every way to help the injured colleague, the widow of the killed cop and finally collects enough money in order to have a last holiday with his wife.

At first, the movie is quite hard to follow since it is arranged as a series of flashbacks that makes it almost impossible to understand the actual order of the events. However, all the doubts are cleared before the middle of the movie and then the narration becomes quite linear. Interestingly, in the second half, there is a strong parallelism between the story of the trip of Nishi with his wife and the paintings made by the paralysed ex-policeman, a very elegant and thought provoking style which I really appreciated.

The dramatic epilogue of the story is filmed with great intelligence and the finale is very touching. It is here that the director shows that he does know where a cruel scene can be properly replaced by a more elegant and polished one using a simple camera pan. Good job!