'AFTER SCHOOL'
Directed by: Kenji Uchida
Written by: Kenji Uchida
Cast: Yo Oizumi, Kuranosuke Sasaki, Masato Sakai, Takako Tokiwa
The movie starts with a beautiful childhood memory that leads to a breakfast scene with a pregnant woman and a salaryman. He eats, then runs of to work in a Porsche. From there, the traditional Japanese plot went haywire but the story will be put in pieces of jigsaw puzzle, enough to make the audience got restless.
Kimura (Masato Sakai), the salaryman went missing after running of with a mysterious women. Miki (Tomoko Tabata) gives birth in a mad rush situation to hospital but Kimura can't be contacted and his responsibility falls to the shoulder of school gym instructor Jinno (Yo Oizumi), Kimura's friends since childhood. A coworker takes a picture of Kimura taking a beautiful woman to a hotel. The photo makes it way to the corporate ladder and his company executives hire a porn shop owner/private detective, Shimazaki (Kuranosuke Sasaki) to find Kimura for unknown reasons. Shimizaki finds Jinno, showed him the photo and Jinho agrees to help out the investigation to find Kimura.
Clue after clue was given to the audience which were peeled of slowly but in an acceptable pace. I'm not fimiliar with director/writer Kenji Uchida works (or forgot I've watched it before coz the title 'Stranger Of Mine ' is very fimiliar) works but impressed with his tricky storyline using multiple viewpoints and non linear structure. Uchida clever aproach is he didn't try to challange viewer mind by making things complicated and later giving a long, boring explaination. Infact, he invite the viewer to experience the situation and examine the evidence themselves. He manipulates but never make the audience felt stupid when he reach the story deconstructing point.
If this a typical Hong Kong/Korean/Japan movie, with the appearance of police squad, Yakuza mobsters, detectives and innocent bystander in a restaurant, I'll guarantee they will be a bloodbath in a final gun vs. katana showdown. Uchida manage to succesfully change the extremely tense situation into comedic ending. Some might find 'After School' boring but for me, it have an original twisted story that is good enough to make Hollywood filmakers thinking of a remake but then again, they will make a poor quality remake and give the original version a bad name.
~ESK
Directed by: Kenji Uchida
Written by: Kenji Uchida
Cast: Yo Oizumi, Kuranosuke Sasaki, Masato Sakai, Takako Tokiwa
The movie starts with a beautiful childhood memory that leads to a breakfast scene with a pregnant woman and a salaryman. He eats, then runs of to work in a Porsche. From there, the traditional Japanese plot went haywire but the story will be put in pieces of jigsaw puzzle, enough to make the audience got restless.
Kimura (Masato Sakai), the salaryman went missing after running of with a mysterious women. Miki (Tomoko Tabata) gives birth in a mad rush situation to hospital but Kimura can't be contacted and his responsibility falls to the shoulder of school gym instructor Jinno (Yo Oizumi), Kimura's friends since childhood. A coworker takes a picture of Kimura taking a beautiful woman to a hotel. The photo makes it way to the corporate ladder and his company executives hire a porn shop owner/private detective, Shimazaki (Kuranosuke Sasaki) to find Kimura for unknown reasons. Shimizaki finds Jinno, showed him the photo and Jinho agrees to help out the investigation to find Kimura.Clue after clue was given to the audience which were peeled of slowly but in an acceptable pace. I'm not fimiliar with director/writer Kenji Uchida works (or forgot I've watched it before coz the title 'Stranger Of Mine ' is very fimiliar) works but impressed with his tricky storyline using multiple viewpoints and non linear structure. Uchida clever aproach is he didn't try to challange viewer mind by making things complicated and later giving a long, boring explaination. Infact, he invite the viewer to experience the situation and examine the evidence themselves. He manipulates but never make the audience felt stupid when he reach the story deconstructing point.If this a typical Hong Kong/Korean/Japan movie, with the appearance of police squad, Yakuza mobsters, detectives and innocent bystander in a restaurant, I'll guarantee they will be a bloodbath in a final gun vs. katana showdown. Uchida manage to succesfully change the extremely tense situation into comedic ending. Some might find 'After School' boring but for me, it have an original twisted story that is good enough to make Hollywood filmakers thinking of a remake but then again, they will make a poor quality remake and give the original version a bad name.~ESK
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