Hana-bi / Fireworks (1997) - Light in darkness - 8/10 (30/04/19)

Fireworks is a beautifully shot philosophical drama that is both nihilistic and life-affirming at the same time.

It tells the story of a police officer whose life takes a turn for the worse when a routine mission goes wrong, killing one of his partners, crippling another and only sparing one other police officer. The protagonist violently avenges his colleagues' fates and is then forced to retire from police work. Coping with remorse, he robs a bank to offer money to the widow of his deceased colleague and expensive materials for his suicidal crippled colleague who manages to find a new purpose in life in painting surrealistic works of art. The protagonist uses the rest of the money to pay off some yakuza loan sharks and pay for his wife's medical fees who suffers physically from leukemia and mentally from the death of their child in the past. The protagonist undertakes a trip with his wife visiting numerous monuments in Japan but he is bothered by greedy yakuza who want to steal what's left of his booty and police officers including the surviving former colleague who has figured out that it was the protagonist who robbed the bank.

The thing I admire about this film is the beauty that can be found in darkness. The crippled police officer is abandoned by his wife and child but manages to find beauty in nature and crafts wonderful surrealistic works of art that were actually created by actor, director and writer Kitano Takeshi himself. The protagonist's wife is quiet and sad throughout most parts of the movie due to her terrible disease and the loss of her child but on their trip through Japan, she opens up, manages to smile again and shows genuine affection for her husband. The protagonist who was about to give everything up after the routine mission gone wrong finds the purpose to make people around him happier which rekindles his own will to live.

Hana-bi beautifully mixes thoughtful dialogues, surreal imagery and appeasing landscapes on one side with gloomy flashbacks, intense action scenes and brooding tension on the other side. This combination is perfectly balanced which keeps the movie equally entertaining and profound. The closing scene must be pointed out as being quite revolting while still being slightly ambiguous. It certainly offers some food for thought and will be remembered for a very long time once you have watched it.

Kitano Takeshi's Hana-bi is a film that will equally appeal to more sophisticated audiences who are looking for a profound drama that offers some food for thought and to fans of intense yakuza flicks that the director shot in the early stages of his directing career. FRom this point of view, Hana-bi might be the film that summarizes Kitano Takeshi's long career best. The film deserves its international acclaim as it showcases Kitano Takeshi's numerous talents without getting pretentious. The facts that the actor's own painting were used in the film and that he had been through a life-threatening experience himself just a few years before this movie was released make Hana-bi his most personal movie as well.