Boiling Point
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Boiling Point DVD cover featuring Takeshi Kitano. |
Boiling Point (
3-4X Jūgatsu; literally: The Third and Fourth of October) is a
1990 film by
Japanese filmmaker
Takeshi Kitano. It was his second film as director and first film as a screenwriter. While
Boiling Point is generally regarded as one of the weaker efforts from "Beat" Takeshi, it is seen as an important first step in his development as a director.
Ono Masahiko starred as a shiftless young man, a member of a losing local
baseball team, whose coach is threatened and attacked by a local
yakuza. He teams up with a friend to go to
Okinawa to purchase guns so they can get revenge. Kitano plays psychotic yakuza named Uehara, who befriends them upon their arrival in Okinawa. Uehara has his own agenda of revenge, and as the story progresses the two boys drift further into his orbit, with unsettling results.
Kitano's trademark black humor suffuses the film in many ways: at one point, the boy finally does get a gun, but shoots out the windshield of his girlfriend's car by mistake. The film also featured comedian
Iizuka Minoru, also known as
Dankan, who went on to become a Kitano regular and
Katsuo Tokashiki who is famous for his kick boxing skills in Japan, he also played a guard in Takeshi Kitano's
Takeshi's Castle in the 1980s.
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Review of Boiling Point by Mike Bracken at ToxicUniverse.com
