KOJI YAKUSHO SPECIAL

Humanity Trumps the Chaos of Disaster

Venue(s): Shin Bungeiza
Kamikaze Taxi: October 16 (Wed), 22 (Tue), 24 (Thu), 26 (Sat), 2024. Check theater site for times.
Language: Kamikaze Taxi will be shown with English and French subtitles
Official website: x.com/shin_bungeiza/status/1842776305001177460
Theater website: www.shin-bungeiza.com/
Theater website: www.shin-bungeiza.com/schedule#d2024-10-16-1
Theater website: www.shin-bungeiza.com/theater
Tariff: General: ￥1,500 (single film viewing)

Title: 秘めたる優しさと狂気 映画俳優・役所広司 (Himetaru Yasashisa to Kyoki, Eiga Haiyu・Yakusho Koji)
Director: Masato Harada (原田眞人)
Duration: 140 min

The Shin-Bungeiza Theater in Ikebukuro is showcasing the staggering versatility of Japan’s beloved actor Koji Yakusho (Shall We Dansu?, Perfect Days), in a series they’ve called “Hidden Kindness and Madness.”Although we encourage you to take in superlative titles like Cure, The Eel, Eureka or the underrated Doppleganger, there’s one that you really must not miss, and it’s the one with English subtitles: Kamikaze Taxi. The 1995 film that arguably put Yakusho on the global map and proved Masato Harada an auteur to watch only gets better with age.

Essentially a road movie that evolves out of a rampage for revenge, it is also a humanistic diatribe against the sexism, racism, xenophobia and corruption that riddles Japan. Yakusho gives an unbearably poignant performance as a taciturn Peruvian Japanese man who finds himself driving the get-away car for a low-level yakuza who’s just taken revenge on the gang who killed his girlfriend on behalf of a sadistic politician. Together, they turn all forces of evil on their heads.

Kamikaze Taxi boasts a number of indelible performances along with Yakusho’s, such as that of Mickey Curtis as the crime boss Animaru (as in “animal”), which won him the Kinema Junpo Award for best supporting actor in 1996. Time magazine lauded the film for what it termed “an epic lunacy, a satiric darkness. Its neon-lit nightscapes and vivid brutality dance, shock—and leave the viewer both riveted and repulsed.”

The characters and the story will definitely stay with you, but it’s the haunting Peruvian pipes soundtrack, written by  Masahiro Kawasaki, that will stay with you forever.

Shin Bungeiza