A painting of me

Yurusarezarumono (Unforgiven)

   14 September 2013, lunch time

I watched a Japanese remake of Unforgiven tonight at TIFF. If you have seen the original, replace the cowboys with samurais. If you have not, stop reading this and go watch Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven. That film is amazing. This remake stars Ken Watanabe (of course) in the lead role, playing a retired blood thirsty killer who has renounced his old ways. He joins his friend to kill two men who cut up a prostitutes face, as he is in need of money to feed his family. This film is amazing. Does the world need a samurai remake of Unforgiven? Hells fucking yes. Westerns are samurai films are westerns. It’s interesting to see just how neatly the story travels from the Wild West to North Japan. Ken Watanabe does a fine job, as one would expect from an actor of his calibre. The scenery of Hokkaido makes a great backdrop for the film. It’s a beautiful movie. I’m only watching two films at TIFF, I think, so I’m very glad this was my second and probably my last. I really can’t recommend it enough.

The TIFF writeup for Unforgiven.

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Blind Detective

   12 September 2013, late at night

Last night I watched Johnnie To’s latest film Blind Detective at TIFF. I was expecting something along the lines of Vengence, Full Time Killer, Election, The Mission, Expect the Unexpected, etc. Very quickly I realized this film was a full on romantic comedy buddy cop film. If I had know Sammi Cheng was Andy Lau’s co-star I might have guessed what was up. Still, it was an enjoyable movie. Andy Lau plays a blind detective helping super-rich cop Sammi Cheng track down her missing childhood friend, in between trying to solve other cold cases for their reward money. He has a knack for getting into the criminal’s head and figuring out what happened at the scene of a crime. The film features a lot of Sammi and Andy reenacting scenes from crimes, which jump between being grizzly and hilarious. It’s very strange. Some of the humour is very slapstick and kind of stupid, but a lot of it is quite funny. Andy Lau’s character is kind of a jerk, and he plays it to great effect. The movie reminded me very much of a 90s HK romantic comedy, the sort of thing I’d watch on CFMT. I’m guessing that’s probably not most people’s thing. The movie tries to be a thriller, buddy cop film, and a romance, which is pretty hard to pull off. I’m not sure he did here, but he gets an A for effort.

The TIFF write up for Blind Detective.

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