Following the lives of a handful of Chinese immigrants scraping a living in Yentown a fictional city in near-future Japan-, Shunji Iwais magical touch imbues this movie with a glow that other directors would sell their best boys to achieve. Its about...(read more) dreams, and the lengths people will go to achieve them. Throw in a subplot about crazed gangsters searching for a tape of -my way- hidden in a hoodlums liver and you have an unmissable treat.
Touching and gritty film about Japan. Without knowing a lot about Japan culture I still enjoyed it, but I'm sure the more you know about Japan the more you would appreciate this film.
For its vision of a multicultural melting pot Japan with bilingual inhabitants, drugs, sex, and violence, I give it 4 stars. It was a fabricated fantasy world that fascinated me. There's probably a moral in the story too--but most of it is just bizarre entertainment. Gaijin speaking flawless Japanese, Japanese-speaking Chinese, and other interesting realities.
MCT:July 4, 2008
MCT:February 4, 2008
MCT:October 7, 2007
MCT:September 23, 2007
