Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Takeshi Kitano's early masterpiece, 9 Jul 2002
I first saw this film by mistake, about six years ago. A friend of mine bought it thinking it was a John Woo style HK action film. Despite the geographical similarity nothing could be further from the truth, Boiling Point is a wonderfully dark, brutal and often disturbingly funny Japanese gangster film, about the exploits of a young loser attempting to buy a gun in order to avenge his humiliation at the the hands of the local Yakuza. Thats about all there is to the plot, as with all Kitano's films its more about atmosphere and emotion than uneccessarily convoluted plot and million dollar CGI effects and stunts. I can't recomend Boiling Point enough, along with Kitanos more recent Brother and films like Ring, Audition and Battle Royale, Japan is currently making some of the best films in the world.
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3 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
JUST DON'T PLAY BY THE RULES !, 7 Feb 2003
BOILING POINT is the second movie shot in 1990 of the japanese writer-director Takeshi -Beat- Kitano. This DVD, apart of the widescreeen version of the movie, offers english subtitles, a trailer which is absolutely stunning, the filmography of Kitano and...nothing else. Meager. BOILING POINT defies our usual analytic technique because the director simply doesn't play by the rules. The movie is satyric in its description of the world of the japanese yakuzas and their archaeological codes, funny with its visual gags and the well-known elliptic Kitano style, arty, in the positive meaning of the word, when Takeshi -Uehara- Kitano experiments an incredible flash-forward in his car, disturbing as Uehara's girl is slapped numerous times without any obvious reasons by the angry mobster. The plot of BOILING POINT develops these structural options in a metaphorical way. The young secretive hero is fond of the baseball game and, one day, he does have the opportunity to give to his team a superb victory. But, seconds before the end of his run, he passes in front of one of his teammates and is disqualified : he too doesn't play by the rules. I liked a lot this movie even if, in my opinion, the screenplay is far more interesting than the images themselves. But this weakness is often common in the first movies of writers/directors. So let's be patient. A DVD zone No Respect.
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1.0 out of 5 stars
Good Film, Egregious DVD Transfer by Tokyo Bullet, 12 Jan 2009
This is a good film, quite slow but rewarding. Fans of Kitano will know what to expect, and will not be disappointed.
The DVD is another matter. Tokyo Bullet have done a very poor job of transferring this work to DVD.
Firstly, the picture is washed-out and lacking in detail. That may be forgivable by some, given the low price.
Far worse is that some aspect of the remastering has caused the picture to lose fidelity at various points - the degradation is most extreme when faces are moving across the screen. I believe this to be the result of a cack-handed attempt at noise-reduction on the part of the transfer engineers (which would be consistent with the washed-out picture). Whatever the case, the problem is very noticeable, and very distracting.
Boo!
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