Boiling Point

Following on the heels of his previous and first film,Violent Cop (1989) Takeshi Kitano returns to the world of the yakuza, this time as writer/director, playing Uehara, a sociopathic yakuza warring with his crime bosses. The main story however revolves around the not-too-bright Masaka (Masahiko Ono), a petrol station attendant and would-be baseball player and how his path crosses that of Uehara.

Takeshi further develops the off-beat style he established in Violent Cop. If you are familiar with, and liked, that film, then this will probably please although anyone who comes to it with expectations of a conventional Asian gangster movie will be disappointed. Takeshi takes much delight in confounding such expectations and a good deal of this film is preoccupied with the witless activities of his knuckle-headed baseball players and the gormless Masaka, long sequences of which are broken up with sudden bursts of mindless violence (the scene with Uehara blazing away with a machine-gun concealed in a bundle of bird-of-paradise flowers is marvellously Tarantino-esque).

FYI: The Japanese title is a slang reference to a baseball score.

 

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