This is actually odd as there should be more than enough material for a two hour running time yet it quickly becomes clear that the filmmakers have different goals here and that the central idea of showcasing Tomohisa Yamashita trumps all others. The central issue with Eiga: Kurosagi is that it feels like a single episode of the show blown up and expanded into a feature film without any consideration that the thin narrative is clearly lacking. Along the way Kurosagi discovers for the first time in his life that though his schemes may be smart that inevitably that there’s always a chance it might lead to the death of someone involved in these illegal activities, a result that weighs heavily on his heart. To add fire to Kurosagi’s drive he’s doing this to retrieve the money lost by a widow who needs it to save her child that desperately requires heart surgery. This time around Kurosagi is out to bring down Tetsu Ishigaki (Naoto Takenaka) a man responsible for multiple money laundering schemes involving promissory notes that end up bankrupting hapless businesses. The movie follows the basic episodic structure of the show featuring the title character Kurosagi (Tomohisa Yamashita), a swindler that has made it a career to take down other swindlers and return the lost money to those who had been conned out of it.
In short, television and film might on the surface appear to be similar but they are in fact totally different mediums and a wise filmmaker would be aware of the massive differences between both.
However, like other television shows which attempt to make the jump to the cinema, it appears the filmmakers have made the same mistakes that have often times plagued these translations. With Kurosagi a hit fans hoped for a second season but instead the producers decided that it was time to bring Tomohisa Yamashita to the silver screen in his first starring feature film thus we have Eiga: Kurosagi which takes place more or less right after the end of the series. It also helped that it had two compelling leads in Tomohisa Yamashita and Maki Horikita who were reunited after showing much onscreen chemistry in the critically lauded Nobuta Wo Produce made a year earlier in 2005. Kurosagi, the eleven episode drama released in 2006, might not have been the pinnacle of Japanese prime time television but it had enough charm and inherent spunk that made the show feel like goofy fun.
0 kommentar(er)
