Boiling Point falls into a tricky category where viewers nowadays will be more likely to see the work only because of the international success of Sonatine, Hana-bi, or Zatoichi— three polished works guided by Takeshi Kitano’s distinct authorship. This sophomore feature, despite featuring his oddball humor, awkward situations and random outbursts, is a raw work focused more on straightforward entertainment over any poignancy or creative bending of the genre.
After staring in his first film, Kitano hands the lead off to Masahiko Ono, who plays Masaki, a mild-mannered gas station attendee and member of a minor Japanese baseball team that gets into some trouble with the local yakuza. After the gangsters seriously injure the coach, Masaki and a friend from the team set off to Okinawa to purchase a gun. Upon arrival, they meet an odd yakuza member in debt —played by the deadpan Kitano—who is planning his own revenge on his yakuza gang.
Kitano’s plot moves along without much of the contemplative downtime in his later yakuza works, but it does meander a bit without any real purpose. Tangential scenes are scattered about, primarily contributing laugh-out-loud Kitano comedy, much like the first half of Kid’s Return and the third act of Kikujiro. Kitano relishes the idiosyncratic in both his style and characters. In one scene, he milks the absurdity by maintaining his static camera for the entire time as an angry character chases a player down the field, and in another scene, the disgruntled yakuza, Uehara, offers his girlfriend to another character for sex and gets severely pissed about it later.
Also apparent is Kitano’s interplay between sudden bursts of violence and tranquil moments. Boiling Point, however, is less poetic in its capriciousness than it is comical, especially with Kitano’s lovable tough guy Uehara, who steals the show by the second half when he somehow enters a scene and turns it into a cruel and perverse situation. Several other one-dimensional characters are introduced and given an occasional, yet uneven focus. The plot is light and uncomplicated, which oftentimes means ‘lazy’—there are neat resolutions that audiences may not find satisfying or on this plane of reality.
Taken as an early, formative piece in Kitano’s career, Boiling Point is quite satisfying with his earlier deadpan jokes and ironic humor. However, the shaky narrative and vacant characters are signs that the viewer should not invest too much hope in witnessing another lyrical Kitano masterpiece. Those are to come later.
Reviewed by Tarun
