Boiling Point (1990)

☆ ☆ ☆

Boiling Point (1990) – T. Kitano

For me, the lustre seems to have worn off Beat Takeshi Kitano some time ago (although I am surprised to discover that he has been steadily making films all this time). Perhaps this is my growing distaste for senseless violence or perhaps the director just got into a rut (both of these things also affected my appreciation for Tarantino – but I haven’t seen the latest from either director).  Boiling Point was Kitano’s second film and he seems to be still developing his technique and his persona, not yet synthesising things as well as he did in Sonatine (1993) and Hana-Bi/Fireworks (1997).  The film follows Masaki (Yûrei Yanagi) who seems a bit of a dullard as he plays baseball, gets into a minor scrape with a low-level yakuza at the petrol station where he works, finds a girlfriend, and then heads to Okinawa to buy a gun for his friend (Taka Guadalcanal), a bar owner, baseball coach, and former yakuza, who has avenged him by getting into a tiff with the gangsters.  In Okinawa, he encounters (and is drawn into the orbit of) Uehara, a petty thug who engages in a range of violent and sexually violent actions without showing much emotion – this character is played flatly by Kitano himself.  The film seems to make no judgments about what takes place, which gives it an unsavoury quality (you feel that some kids could glamourize the violence here, a perpetual problem in cinema).  Later, we return to Masaki and the denouement that rounds off the film as a sort of revenge drama.  What distinguishes Boiling Point from other films (and Kitano from other directors) is the wry dry humour that laces the film, usually taking the form of shots that begin an action and then are edited to show reactions or consequences (without showing the middle bits). He would finesse this style in later films.