BROTHER



Japan-UK, 2000, 112 min, color

After winning a "Golden Lion" for "Fireworks", internationally-acclaimed director Takeshi Kitano offers this gangster saga with a cross-cultural twist. Yamamoto, a yakuza, is forced out of the country when a gang war all but wipes out his clan. He goes to Los Angeles to join his half-brother Ken, who is a street tough. Yamamoto starts staking out turf and organizing Ken's mob into one of the most powerful criminal syndicates in the city. As his gang grows, he is joined by Kato, a lieutenant from Japan. It seems no one can stop Yamamoto but the Mafia. Soon, everything built by him falls apart.

"Kitano's best-known films are tender and poetic, in spite of the unpredictable character played most often by Kitano himself (under the pseudonym Beat Takeshi). Brother however is a hard-boiled yakuza gangster movie. The story and the camera focus on the Kitano character, whose face is in the real centre of the film."