Quick Review #121: Wara no tate (movie)

Title: Wara no tate / 藁の盾　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　

Rating: 3 / 10

Recommended for: 

For those who like action films by Miike Takashi and/or are fans of Oosawa Takao and Fujiwara Tatsuya

* Potential spoilers ahead!

* I remember having watched this before in the cinema when it showed in Singapore 12 years ago but I didn't write a review back then.

Liked:

- If you are a fan of Oosawa and Fujiwara, chances are, you would be quite pleased to see them in this movie. I have been on a Oosawa-high after watching the "Kingdom" movie series so this film came at a perfect time for me because he had a lot of scenes as the lead and looked so good. As for Fujiwara, he had a meaty and difficult role and as usual, you can count on him to deliver a credible performance.

Disliked: 

- I think I've mentioned this before but perhaps, Miike Takashi's films just don't go down well with me. Those who like his style might think otherwise though. 

The biggest issue I find this time (even though this was my second time watching it) was how flat the story was. Perhaps this was why I didn't want to write a review back then even though I made the effort to watch this in the cinema for the sake of Oosawa and Fujiwara.

So much attention was put on the nationwide manhunt for a psychopath killer who was being escorted to Tokyo for questioning and to be honest, the action scenes were pretty good. However, the story did not give much insight into the characters who felt very one-dimensional and forgettable. It also did not delve as deep into the moral dilemma of duty vs. conscience & justice as implied in the PR captions What's more, the ending was kind of sloppy even though I liked the fact that Oosawa's character survived.

- I feel that female characters in such movies can be portrayed quite stereotypically and positioned as more of an afterthought so it wasn't surprising to see Matsushima's character having not much room for development. It was a pity though because she did undergo an image change for this role but it just didn't leave much of an impact and felt rather insignificant.