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Brother Actors: Takeshi Kitano, Kuroudo Maki Director: Takeshi Kitano Number of Items: 1 Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen Format: Color, Widescreen, Closed-captioned, Dolby Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Running Time: 113 minutes Studio: Columbia/Tristar Studios Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Region Code: 1 Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2002-01-02 Buy from Amazon |
 "Unfortunately not the best work of Kitano"I worship Kitano as a director and I really really love Kitano's work. I was dying to see his new film after my very favorite Sonatine, Hana-Bi (Fireworks) and Kikujiro. There are many genius work in this film, but unfortunately it didn't quite come together as much as he intended. Maybe because this film took rather unique production procedures - a Hollywood format by Japanese director and staff. There are a bit too much brutal scenes of "harakiri" and yakuza rituals. And the most disappointingly, too much story feeding to the audience by the protagonists' dialogues. The last scene with Omar really wasn't necessary. These unnecessary additions ruins the elegant taste he usually have for his former works. In terms of acting, Kuroudo Maki was terrible! He was farely good in "Scene at the Sea". So it was quite disappointing to see him how terrible he act out with dialogues.. But all in all, this till is a must-see movie - as you can't see anything like this anywhere.  "Wonderful Filmmaking!"Brother was the first Takeshi Kitano film that I saw and I loved it! The great thing about this film is that it is not the typical Hollywood garbage that you are so used to. It is not a neat tie a ribbon around it, and stick a pretty bow on top type of film. This beautifully filmed, riveting crime drama is a must see! It is very refreshing to see a film from a non-western perspective. Kitano's presence is extremely charismatic and engaging, though he says little and his filmmaker's eye is unmatched. A+++++ film. My only problem is that the DVD did not have any special features about the movie. This is a travesty for such a wonderful film. "This DVD contains an edited version."Since everyone else has already written about how they thought much of the film was formulaic, which it was, or how Kitano transcends the cliches, which he does, I'll just say that, despite some faltering performances by a few of the American actors, the film is very identifiable and enjoyable as a "Kitano" film. What you should know is that the disc contains a "cleaned-up" version of the film in which many scenes containing violent content have been cropped or had gore digitally removed for U.S. release. I don't believe it affects the running time much, but it is different from the Japanese release. Also, if the subtitles (English or otherwise) are enabled, they run on all dialogue throughout the movie. A selection were only the non-English dialogue is subtitled would have been appreciated. I watch many subtitled films, but it felt distracting here.  "Do Not Buy This DVD; It is Edited and The Pictur Is Terrible"Colors are not to be changed, they are to be left to their original tint or brightness. Today I bought Brother at Best Buy. I was happy to find that I got the last copy of the 2 shelves of them. I was suprised, so I bought it. When I got to opening it, there was some nice cover art on the disc, and no freaking collecters booklet on most Sony discs. I popped the disc in to my new "Panny" RP56 and set down to watch on my Phillips 16:9 HDTV. Never have I seen a film murdered in front of my eyes. It's a movie about blah, blah go to Internet Movie Database and search under Brother to find out. Aniki's(main character) world is not exciting, and somewhat gloomy. There is an occasional color flair(rare) to hint at a character's persoanlity. Blacks are deep and accurate, there are tons of gray, blue is on the dark side, green is in some scenes dark and other scenes light, finally red is crimson, and sometimes darker. All of this is representted accurately on the two DVD's I have previously watched(UK and Japan) and seen in a THX certified theater. The theater I saw the movie was dead on, and the picture quality was unbeatable. All of the above is thrown out in the Sony Pictures Classics version. Gray is subdued and no longer prevalent. Blacks are ruined which killed a couple scenes. Blue is no longer dark or a little dark, it's plain blue. Green is a neon green in some scenes and now is a bright. Red is pushed, but just enough that the color is a bit lighter. The beginning scene is ruined by the Sony version. Kitano standing waiting for the cab is supposed to stick out, and the background is covered in the back with a thing gray, to make him prevalent. Instead the Sony version completely takes out the gray, and the scene is then butchered. The scene where Kitano murders the Latino drug dealer the blacks are deep, the colors subdued. The Sony version, pushes the flesh tones the blacks are off, and the green door to the left of Claude Maki is now a bright neon green, whereas the other versions had the door dark green or a light pine green. There also to seems to be a fairly large quantity of edge enhancement, which is absent on the 3 other sources. What doesn't help the Sony Pictures Classics version is that its edited. The movie begins with a Sony Pictures Classics label pasted over the Kitano label, with the background music still there. This tells you that, you are about to watch an inferior version. There are various edits to the movie digitally. Such as painting over brain matter on walls from gunshots, and time and gore edits. The stark emotion of the Hagakure scene is also killed by the editing. The features? Just some ...trailers for some movies that remind me of the word 'crud' The audio is okay, but with the lack of DTS,... "Finally Takeshi with some action"Rather than the slow pace found in "Fireworks," this film has much more action and Chow-Yun-Fatism that most HK film people look for...Its very good. |
