Bunraku 2010

Bunraku 2010

Bunraku is a traditional form of Japanese puppet theater, but I know very little about it so I will instead discuss the 2010 live action film Bunraku.  Bunraku is a revenge and violence tale that draws heavily on Japanese traditions such as Kabuki theater, Bunraku and samurai, but it also blends in heavy doses of the Western genre and modern revenge flicks.  This is a truly stylish film that is fun and light hearted, playing around within the tropes and ideas common to the genres and histories it both parodies and celebrates.  It delivers this style through fantastic fight scenes, creative green screen and CG effects, music, sound, direction and narration, but despite all the spectacles throughout the film it is somehow a little dry and uninteresting.  Style to me can make up for flaws bigger than wooden acting and poor pacing and this film had style enough to overcome a plot that was written in crayon by a kid wearing a helmet.  Every aspect of this film draws in references from film, video games (a top down GTA scenes and numbered enemies), comics (Spiderman-ish pop-up book, comic dialogue boxes for subtitled sections) and pop culture.  These can be distracting (video game dings), but overall are fun and referential humor is a win in my book.  The creative mish-mash of genres and styles comes together to create a feeling of a cross between a stage production of a Western and a puppet version of a traditional samurai film. 

The director, Guy Moshe, deserves the credit for the successes in this film.  Drawing together the desperate styles had to be done by a true artist. The film has some writing missteps, but it mostly falls down due to the acting. The narrator  (apparently stylistically straight out of Bunraku theater), voiced by Mike Patton,  is heavy handed and over used despite sounding awesome. The acting leaves a lot to be desired, even by some of the actors that originally drew me to the film such as Woody Harrelson and Demi Moore.  I can't bring myself to like Josh Hartnett despite him doing great in this film and several minor characters seemed to be miscast.  Other actors saved the film from becoming an artist, stylish bore.  Ron Perlman as the antagonist woodcutter Nicola was great.  Perlman really nails roles where he needs to be a likeable bad guy (see him in Sons of Anarchy he makes the show).  The androgynous Japanese actor Gackt plays the second protagonist Yoshi spectacularly.  His acting, makeup, and costuming bring to life the Japanese aesthetics.  Killer Number Two (I mentioned numbered enemies right?), Kevin McKidd of Grey's Anatomy fame, was a great cold, analytica bad guy who reminded me of the awesome antagonist the Swede from AMC's Hell on Wheels.

The technical side of the film shocked the film to life with great effects, style in spades and cool sound, but the best technical parts of the film where without a doubt the crazy, violent and fun fights.  The fight scenes throughout the film that mix of stylized western gang fights (like Gangs of New York), violent fights of modern revenge flicks (Kill Bill), stand-offs from Spaghetti Westerns (Dollars Trilogy), stylized shadow fights from Asian theater, puppet violence and duels straight out of Samurai films (Yojimbo).  The beautiful and stylized fights come right out of the gate with digital paper cut-outs showing warfare and downfall of man.  Again it was stylish, fun, and comical if a bit dry.  One set of simultaneous fights played well with the ideas of shadow theater, tying the two fights together by showing sections of the action purely or partially through shillouettes and shadows, but these clips were quick and underutilized.  Another fight during a prison break is reference to side scrolling video games.  A bare knuckles fight towards the end of the movie was a stunning fight with tremendous use of the soundtrack and sound effects.

The multidimensional and layered fights combining comic scenes, beauty, and violence are the core of film.  The writing and acting try to justify the collection of fight scenes, but fail to prop it up completely.  On the other hand the style and art direction manage to hold up this crazy, make shift, CG paper construction of a film despite the movie's flimsy substance.  I am not sure how highly I can recommend this film as it might have a niche audience and despite very competent construction of the film it lacks too much in the pacing and story to keep it interesting.  I fear despite my strong attraction to the film most audiences will find it a simple, if stylish, bit of popcorn spectacle.  I would recommend Bunraku to fans of Samurai Westerns and fans of Quentin Tarantino or Guy Ritchie.