KAMIKAZE TAXI

An Outcast Cabbie Picks Up the Wrong Fare

Venue(s): Kawasaki Art Center
April 28 (Thur): 12:35, April 29 (Fri): 14:50
Language: Japanese with English subtitles


Title: 復讐の天使 (Fukushu no Tenshi)

One of the truly great 90s Japanese films, Masato Harada’s first film at home after spending a decade in Hollywood is still his angriest, darkest and perhaps most thrillingly enjoyable social critique of Japan’s blindspots (racism, chauvinism, sexism, political corruption). It’s also his first film with the legendary Koji Yakusho, for whom Harada has written five more starring roles over the ensuing 20+ years.

In Kamikaze Taxi, Yakusho plays (very convincingly) a Peruvian-Japanese cabbie named Kantake, who picks up a volatile passenger one day, setting a climactic showdown into motion. The passenger, Tatsuo (Kazuya Takahashi) is a pimp whose prostitute girlfriend (Reiko Kataoka) is savagely beaten by a perverted politician, only to be killed by crime boss Animaru (Mickey Curtis). Bent on revenge, Tatsuo vandalizes the politician’s house and flees in Kantake’s taxi, with his gang and an array of other frightening types in pursuit.

On its release, Time magazine’s Richard Corliss wrote: “The film has an epic lunacy, a satiric darkness. Its neon-lit nightscapes and vivid brutality dance, shock — and leave the viewer both riveted and repulsed.”

A true cinephile, Harada studied film in the UK before going to Hollywood, where he first wrote film criticism, met Howard Hawks — whom he considers his mentor — and started making his own films.

Over the past few years, he’s seen both critical and box-office success, and in 2015 was the inaugural Director in Focus of the Tokyo International Film Festival’s Japan Now Section.

Don’t miss this all-too-rare opportunity to see one of Harada’s masterworks, and still one of Yakusho’s most indelible roles.

Kawasaki Art Center