Brother - Reaction

[Japan]

An immensely violent movie about about a Japanese gangster who moves to America and starts another gang. It's not much fun to watch. Thematically, the movie deals with resignment to and inevitability of violence, in this case in gang wars. The framing in violent scenes sometimes excludes heads, making the violence impersonal and somehow universal. It's an interesting technique.

I found myself uninvolved with the movie. Possibly, it's because the main character -I feel it'd be inappropriate to use the term hero or protagonist- is too inscrutable and impassive. He doesn't seem to care much about what happens. This also makes it difficult to see how relationships in the film grow. Further, the status of the relationship between rival gangs is occasionally hard to follow. Finally, I feel like the movie could've made its point much more compactly.