Goro Kishitani Movies
Idiosyncratic Japanese auteur Takashi Miike offers another meditation on a violent culture in this teen-themed thriller. Genji Takaya (Shun Oguri) is a teenage troublemaker whose father, Hideo (Goro Kishitani), is a high-ranking member of the yakuza. Genji is a new student at Suzuran Boys' High, a educational facility for juvenile delinquents nicknamed "The School for Crows," and he's determined to make a name for himself as someone who doesn't back down from a challenge in order to impress both his father and his new classmates. Not long after arriving on campus, Genji comes to blows with Ken Katagiri (Kyosuke Yabe), who thinks at first that the new kid is someone else. Genji beats Ken into submission and wins his grudging respect, but when word gets out about the fight, Genji finds every tough guy in the school is waiting for his turn to show Genji who's boss, with the leader of the school underground empire, Tamao Serizawa (Takayuki Yamada), waiting at the end of the line. Kurozu Zero (aka Crows: Episode 0) was the third feature released in 2007 by the prolific Takashi Miike. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Shun Oguri, Kyosuke Yabe, (more)
Cult Japanese director Takashi Miike draws inspiration from the popular Playstation 2 title Yakuza for this unhinged tale of underworld violence in Tokyo starring Goro Kishitani and Kazuki Kitamura. It's summertime in Tokyo, and as the temperature rises, two undercover cops stake out a high-profile bank robbery while complaining about the air conditioning. When the masked gunmen make their way into the vault only to find that the Tojo gang's ten-million-yen deposit has mysteriously vanished, an already complicated situation gradually starts to spiral out of control. Meanwhile, in another part of town, psychotic yakuza Goro Majima (Kishitani) strikes out on his own to pay a visit to rival gang leader Kazuma Kiryu (Kitamura) and track down the missing mother of adorable youngster Haruka (Natsuo). It seems that Haruka's mother has some valuable information, and Majima is determined to find her at any cost. Now, as Majima makes his way through the neon-lit streets of Tokyo, Satoru (Shun Shioya) and his girlfriend, Yui (Saeko), embark on a bold robbery spree, and South Korean hitman Park (Yoo Gong) prepares to locate and terminate the thieves who absconded with the Toho gang's money. Later, after Majima and Kiryu engage in a series of fights all across the city, a confrontation at the top of Tokyo's Millennium Tower finds the true criminal mastermind finally stepping out of the shadows. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kazuki Kitamura, Goro Kishitani, (more)
Visionary horror film director Takashi Miike delivers a typically stylish and idiosyncratic scare-fest with this thriller. Yumi Nakamura (Kou Shibasaki) is a mildly paranoid young woman whose good friend, Yoko, receives a strange and mysterious call on her cell phone. The phone's read-out says that the call came from Yoko's own number, but from three days into the future; 72 hours later, Yoko dies in a bizarre accident moments after getting the same call over again. Yumi learns that Yoko isn't the only person to have had this experience; the spirit of a vengeful woman has been creeping into people's cell phones, and one by one is taking the lives of the folks in their internal telephone books. As Yumi struggles to solve the mystery of how and why this could be happening before someone else dies, she discovers the story has more to do with her than she imagined. Chakushin Ari was a major box-office success in Japan, where leading lady Kou Shibasaki is a popular recording artist as well as an actress. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kou Shibasaki, Shinichi Tsutsumi, (more)
In the year 2084, when humanity is decimated by a ruthless alien force, all hope lies in Milly (Anne Suzuki), a hardened young soldier, as she goes back in time to stop the invasion before it's too late. Ending up in present-day 2002, she appears in the middle of a gunfight as Miyamoto (Takeshi Kaneshiro), a mysterious mercenary, is breaking up a child-slave ring headed by Mizoguchi (Goro Kishitani), a ruthless Triad member with an uncanny thirst for blood. With bullets flying left and right, Milly is shot by Miyamoto and is brought into his secretive ring of do-gooding with the smart-mouthed Kirin Kiki, an arms-dealing old woman that's helping Miyamoto on his quest for revenge against Mizoguchi. Through some coercing (by the form of a small, explosive device the size of a band-aid on his neck), Miyamoto unwillingly joins the mission, as they infiltrate the government base that holds a captured alien and its crashed spacecraft -- the first contact that eventually brings on the invasion. With Mizoguchi and the Triads moving in, seeking some of the alien advanced weaponry, Miyamoto may finally get the vengeance he seeks as Milly gets closer and closer to saving the entire human race. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Takeshi Kaneshiro, Anne Suzuki, (more)
For his fifth or sixth film of 2002 -- one easily loses count -- Takashi Miike adapts Kinji Fukasaku's 1975 gangster classic Jingi no Hakaba about a doomed love affair between a renegade yakuza and his long-suffering girlfriend. Whereas the original film was set in the poverty of Japan's immediate postwar era, this work is set during Japan's yen-flushed bubble era of the 1980s through the economic malaise of the 1990s. The film opens with Rikuo Ishimatsu (Goro Kishitani) coming to the aid of crime lord Sawada (Shingo Yamashiro) with guns a-blazin' in a slick Chinese restaurant. The grateful godfather makes Ishimatsu his under boss, though he quickly establishes himself as a loose cannon with a hair-trigger temper. His first meeting with his future common-in-law wife Chieko (Narimi Arimori) is short and violent: He rapes her in a hostess club. Not only does she not press charges, but she falls for the brute. Later, Ishimatsu is thrown in jail for killing a loan welsher where he becomes friends with Imamura (Ryosuke Miki), a lieutenant in a rival gang. When Ishimatsu finally gets out of stir, both Sawada and Chieko are waiting for him. He quickly rises the ranks of the gang power structure, only for him to blow it over a misunderstanding over a ten-million-yen loan. Ishimatsu's temper gets the better of him, and causes harm to all close to him. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Goro Kishitani, Narimi Arimori, (more)
