Gozu Reviews

gozu is exceedingly slow. i'm fine with slow movies; i'm fine with silent era movies...gozu is just slow.

the entire story is not much really. a yakuza boss sends one of his hitmen to the "dump" (the place where he will be killed). the hitman's 'brother' is charged with taking him and doing the job. the hitman dies before they make it there and the brother losses him. he spends most of the movie trying to find the guy meeting a cast of odd characters (odd but not terribly interesting). all of which takes about 2 hours to lead up to an ending that isn't so much surprising as it is just weird. by the time you get to the end you've sat painfully through too much of nothing.

the biggest surprise and most interesting thing about this movie is not entirely answered in the film. the hitman is transformed into a woman in a car demolition lot. and seemingly has done so to exact his plot to kill the yakuza boss by luring him into sex and getting to him in private. he doesn't succeed because the boss is killed by the brother who has fallen in love with the now-woman. they begin to have sex and the brother comes back out of the woman in the only gorey part of the entire film. its far from believable and frankly kind've silly. thats the end except for a scene of the hitman, brother, and woman in the city.

i'm not sure why this movie get such great reviews. theres nothing great about it. its not that its bad actually. it just should have been about half as long and somewhat more bold.

this from the man that gave us ichii the killer....hmm. watch ichii skip this.