Review of Fireworks

I liked the concept of this film, which turns the yakuza genre sideways by focusing on emotional trauma and grief instead of action. When the violence comes it's in brief bursts followed by long intervals, which allows the impact to seep into us. The film oozes melancholy and brooding, but somehow I never felt the emotional devastation that I knew I supposed to be feeling. The cop who has lost a child, has a terminally ill wife, and then watches his partners die or be crippled is at the end of his rope, but because he has nothing left to lose, he's stronger as a result. He impassively stares down the yakuza and if any get out of line with him, he does things like put a chopstick through their eye at lightning speed. We see that his priorities are his wife and his friend, and that he'll invert morality to support them, which is all pretty interesting stuff.

It was hard to connect emotionally to this film, probably because his relationship with his wife is shown with moments that have all the authenticity and appeal of a television commercial. The soundtrack is similarly shallow, and pace is a problem too, with the emphasis shifting so heavily to moments of inaction. His partner dabbles in art to pass the time after being forced to retire, producing mostly mediocre surreal and pointillist paintings which are oddly given quite a bit of screen time, which seemed a self-indulgence of director/writer/star/artist Takeshi Kitano. The ending itself was strong, but mostly I was disappointed by this one.