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BROTHER - YAKUZA GUTS AND GLORY IN THE CITY OF ANGELS

By Ivan Corsa

"Beat" Takeshi Kitano has been making and starring in films for over ten years now. But it has only been in the span of the past five years that he has swiftly emerged as a world-renown auteur, with his most recent films, starting with 1997's "Hanabi," capturing overseas audiences as well as accolades and awards at international film festivals, including the Golden Lion prize at the Venice International Film Festival.  This month, Kitano return's to the American big screen with his ninth film, "Brother."

 Brother explores themes and styles of Kitano's previous films. It's a violent yakuza story that pulls no punches in scenes where loyalty is tested and proven to extreme. But its brazen violence is offset by Kitano's gift for delicate compositions and  poetic cinematography.

 The story has its roots in Japan's underworld, but is set in Los Angeles. Takeshi plays Yamamoto, a player in a Tokyo crime family that is at war. When the head of the family is murdered in a hit, the rival factions merge, and Yamamoto himself becomes the target of assassination. He is spared by the sympathetic comrade ordered to carry out the assassination.

 Spared death, Yamamoto is exiled. With fake passport and a bag full of cash, he heads to LA, where his younger brother Ken (Claude Maki) has set up shop as a small-time drug dealer leading a band of black and Latino gangbangers on the city's mean streets.

 Jarred upon his arrival in LA, Yamamoto is initially confused by his new foreign home and its alien language, but soon finds a comfortable place in the fertile territory of Ken's gang operation, stepping in to turn it from petty drug-pushing into a lean, ruthless yakuza-style organization. He imports his disciplined yakuza ways into the gang's operations, and, before you know it, Yamamoto is suddenly the fierce leader of one of LA's most terrifying gangs and at war with the local Mafia.

  There is no shortage of shoot-'em-up action in Brother, and the story moves quickly through a series scenes documenting the escalating cycles of vicious thuggery. It happens with Yamamoto barely uttering an unnecessary word. He's a quiet study, reflective, laidback, but disarmingly clever, not to mention totally lethal. A thoroughly tough motherfucker, who doesn't need to tell people he's tough. He "just is." That he barely speaks English underscores one of the themes of this film: the universal language of violence and its power to destroy its victims and perpetrators alike. Through action rather than words, Yamamoto imparts on his newly minted American yakuza the ethics of brotherhood and loyalty.

 One character in particular, an LA gangbanger named Denny, becomes a close lieutenant in Kitano's inner circle. Played by Omar Epps, Denny gets cut up by Yamamoto in an early street confrontation when Denny, seen from Yamamoto's point of view as an angry black hoodlum stereotype, is bumped into accidentally by Kitano, viewed by Denny as a confused, middle-aged Japanese tourist stereotype, while looking for Ken's apartment on his first day in LA. But things are not what they seem.

 Later, it turns out that Denny is a member of Ken's gang. To Denny's surprise, the middle-aged Japanese guy is his boss's elder brother. From then forward Kitano and Epps bond over card games and spilled blood. Their relationship becomes as close as that of brothers, and in the traditions of the yakuza, they are.

 If violence is universal and a language that crosses cultural barriers, then so too are the ideas of brotherhood and loyalty. Whether in South Central LA or in Shinjuku, the codes of loyalty are the same. What's more, the cultural imprints of one notion of loyalty can be transplanted to an otherwise alien landscape.

 Brother, it has been observed, serves as a vehicle for Kitano to show the "Japanese way" to outsiders, and it is by setting the story in Los Angeles that a Japanese style is brought into higher relief. It is more visible because of its foreign setting.

 Brother is a beautiful film, but it's not perfect. There is the odd East-meets-West type cliche injected for what seems humor's sake (though perhaps some culture-clash authenticity as well) that feel forced and overdone, as in a scene mid-way through the film when one of Yamamoto's loyal sidekicks from Tokyo struggles in a basketball match with the big boys of the hood.

 The final scene ends on an awkward note, which we've been told was changed from that of the film's original version, and is uncomfortably sentimental in its effort to add some redemptive closure to the story.

 But in every other way, Brother is an achievement. Co-produced by Jeremy Thomas (of "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence" and "The Last Emperor" fame) and Masayuki Mori (a long-time Kitano collaborator) Brother has been in development for five years and is Takeshi's most ambitious film yet . It's his first work shot almost entirely in English and outside Japan with an American and Japanese cast and crew.

 For international audiences, or at least English-speaking viewers, it is his most accessible film yet. Elegantly directed with scarcely a wasted gesture, Brother is another sure-footed stride in the important re-emergence of Japanese cinema's international profile.