The
more you work with firearms, the more you come to regard them as a simple tool.
Alas, Toru Nishikawa’s society does not afford him that opportunity, so when he
chances across a Magnum at a riverside crime scene, he is compelled to pocket
it—and quickly becomes obsessed with its dangerous power. Plenty of blame will
be placed on the inanimate object in Masaharu Take’s The Gun, which
screens during the 2019 New York Asian Film Festival.
There
was a dead body and a gun lying next to it, but Nishikawa is compelled to swipe
the latter before the cops arrive. As soon as he gets home, he starts
fantasizing about how he might use it. The abusive mother living in the
next-door apartment immediately presents herself as an appropriate prospective
victim. However, Nishikawa intends to take his time, so he can savor the idea and
the anticipation. He will even start a semi-serious relationship with an
attractive fellow undergrad, Yuki Yoshikawa, who has recently resumed her
studies.
The
Gun somewhat
follows in the vein of the “Blue Scorpion” episode of the new Twilight Zone reboot
series, in that both literally demonize hand guns. At least Take and
co-screenwriter Hideki Shishido are more subtle in how they go about it. They
also take things in a very existential, Dostoevskian direction. You would
almost expect to find Nishikawa huddled in a Moscow garret.
Unfortunately,
the film basically runs out of steam during the third act, allowing a lot of
good film noir business to go to waste. It is especially frustrating to see the
great Lily Frankly only really have one extended scene as the cop giving
Nishikawa the Columbo treatment. More of their cat-and-mouse and less of
Nishikawa’s self-destructive angst would have made Gun a stronger film.
Nevertheless,
Nijiro Murakami is viscerally intense and unsettlingly sociopathic as Nishikawa.
He is all kinds of creepy and clammy. Franky is perfectly cast as the
world-weary, smarter-than-he-looks flatfoot, while Alice Hirose is terrific as
the warm but insecure Yoshikawa.
As
in previous films, such as 100 Yen Love, Take dives into the grubby,
marginalized milieu. Hiromitsu Nishimura’s stark black-and-white cinematography
quite effectively reflects Nishikawa’s darkly agitated state of mind, in a way
reminiscent of Aronofsky’s Pi. Yet, somehow, he dispenses with too many
subplots in a perfunctory, on-the-nose manner, like the scene involving the
biological father Nishikawa has not met up until the second act.
Altogether,
The Gun is a hugely frustrating film for hardboiled thriller fans, but it
is safe to say Franky will leave them wanting more. Recommended for those who
value noir visual stylings over substance, The Gun screens this Sunday
(6/30) as part of this year’s NYAFF.
