Dark Rain

The film takes place in Osaka, an industrial port city in the center of Japan. There's a scene half way through the movie when one of the five protagonists tries to kill himself by the docks at night. He ties an anchor to himself and leans over the jetty looking into the dark water. He cocks his gun and pushes it into his mouth. He finally decides not to go through with it yet at the same moment the achor falls into the water. He grabs it just before it pulls him in, saving him from certain death.

It's a good scene, shot economically and avoids the melodramatic potential of a suicide. However, it also highlights this excellent crime film's one failing: the lack of humour needed to counter balance the ceaseless violence. The achor falling into the water could have led to a darkly ironic scene of the guy almost drowing and desperately fighting for life just after trying to kill himself, finally pulling himself to safety and cursing his stupidity. Instead it's played straight and I ended up chuckling at my own version.

Kitano's presence as an actor can't help but make me wonder at the changes he would have made if he had directed, a dark wit and even cooler, sparser violence, but as it is it's a fun, dark noir film. The simple plot (which you can read about in the other reviews) is well paced and watching these characters move from clubs to seedy back streets, baseball batting ranges to coach station toilets is a pleasure and gives an insight into the kind of places where these kind of stories happen, if that's your thing... Plus, the last 10 minutes of broody rainy violence is a visual, muted delight.