Reviews

"What should I do with my life now?" is the question that every member in the family at the center of this story is dealing with.

The father is fired from his high position in a corporation. He is reduced to lying about his life to his family, standing in lines for free food, and eventually ends up working as a janitor. The mother struggles to keep the family together only to become a fallen woman when she gets involved with a fallen man. The oldest son doesn't know what to do with his life, so he joins the US military and goes to war in the Middle East. The youngest son might be a genius piano player, but his father forbids him from playing the piano.

A few unrealistic twists are thrown in to keep things interesting, but overall the film deals with the real questions and problems that people face. If you are pondering what you've done with your life and what direction you want to take it, then this film is for you. It is a depressing film where everyone's life takes a turn for the worse, but the end of the film shows that there is a faint sliver of hope.

The film takes place in the near future, so it doesn't have much in the way of cool technology and it doesn't waste time dwelling on futuristic toys.

The story is told from the point of view of the activists, who have been labeled by the state as terrorists. The news tells lies about them to the population in order to further the state's agenda and make them comply with the fascist regime. For example when their leader is shot by rioters the news reports that the terrorist leader was killed in a gun battle with police, when in fact she was shot before the police even arrived.

Militarized police are ubiquitous throughout the streets. Citizens have given up their rights and are treated like cattle.

The action sequences near the end are believably realistic and entertaining. It's not the type of comic book action you see in other films that have one guy fighting a swarm of bad guys and winning. Fans of action films will not be let down though, in spite of the fact that the civilian hero gets through it all without touching a gun even once or using kung-fu.

The film isn't just entertaining but thought provoking. Instead of bombarding you with distracting sensationalism, it makes you think about the important things that are going on right now and things that might happen in the near future.

We are initially given a one-sided glimpse into two white police officers. One is a rookie cop with a good head on his shoulders, and the other is an older cop with racist ideas. Initially, we are led to be unsympathetic to the racist cop due to his words and actions towards a black couple. As the story progresses to show certain sides of other characters, we are given glimpses into other aspects of the racist cop's life, asking us to reevaluate their opinions of him. Later on in the story he saves the life of the black woman he wronged at the beginning.

The rookie cop leaves the older cop cop because he doesn't like racism, then becomes something of a hero when he saves the life of the black man who is the husband of the woman. However, in the end, we see that even he is not totally without racism. Fearing for his life, an intense split-section decision based on racial ideas causes him to accidentally shoot and kill his black friend.

The story does similar things as it follows different characters of different races whose stories interlock. We are led to think in certain ways about characters and then later on presented with something contradictory to our first impressions about them, One flaw I see in the movie is what caused the rookie cop to suddenly have racist ideas. Did he have these ideas all along? Before we see his racist side in the end, the racist cop basically tells him to just wait until he's been working as a cop for a few years, and then he'll see that racism isn't totally unjustified. This could have been the seed that was planted that caused him to shoot his friend out of racism.

The message I got is that when you judge people by their race, you'll sometimes be right, but you'll also sometimes be wrong. It can also be an oversimplification to say that a person is a racist or a non-racist. Not all older people with seemingly racist ideas about people are pure evil, but overall racism does more harm than good, as is the case with all oversimplifications. These sometimes save a life, but more often they cost lives. Once you've oversimplified someone you've already misunderstood them. I like how the film presents the complexities of people and their racist thoughts, giving us the inside stories that we usually don't get that are necessary for understanding. The film does a good job with this for the white, black, Mexican, and Middle Eastern characters, but falls short when it comes to the Asian immigrants.

The movie is about an elderly Japanese man who is sexually obsessed. He is getting shots from his doctor so that he can continue to have an active sex life with his beautiful wife. (In those days they did not have Viagra.) He wants to feel young and sexually excited. He has discovered that jealousy is one way to obtain this feeling. So he tries to get the young doctor interested in his wife by doing such things as getting them drunk together and having the doctor develop naked pictures of her. The doctor is already involved with the family's daughter, but she is not nearly as physically attractive as the mother.

This is a movie based on the novel "The Key" by Tanizaki Jun'ichiro. I have read the English translation and can say that the changes which have been made serve to help the adaptation work on the screen.

Overall it is an entertaining film. The ending differs from the book somewhat and I found it to be quite comical.