taptieg24
it's a good watch if u have time - deals with three friends who get into a needless bar fight, and get into serious trouble. they find themselves fighting some shadowy people, and can't deal with. very, very disturbing portrayal of japan, the arbitrariness of modern life... some intense scenes, but a bit of a potboilerthe spoiler was that the plot is not too clear based on English sub titles. obviously, i don't know Japanese.the only other Japanese movies i've seen were kurosawa, who is a different and far loftier than this modern genre. so, can't really compare. otherwise, it compares better with most Hollywood "blockbusters" for story plot and buildup.taptieg24
Brian Thibodeau
NOBODY (1999) is a fantastic piece of Japanese noir. It's about three salarymen who get in way over their heads when their innocent, drunken cheapshots p*** off three OTHER guys one night in a bar. When these three mysterious strangers, who are up to much more deviant no-goodness than even the film allows us to know, beat the living daylights out of one of our "heroes", the trio decides to return the favour in kind - only they accidentally KILL one of the other guys! The remaining two baddies then begin the systematic destruction of everything these poor schmoes hold dear, including their fast-dwindling sanity. Phaedra Video's DVD sleeve features a critic quote calling the film "A paranoid street crime freakout!" or some such, and the term more than applies here. Brooding, tense, very violent and low-key (but still pretty slick), shot largely at night with many deliberately vague moments and character motivations that keep the audience guessing right along with the besieged protagonists (who, to some degree, deserve everything they get!). I give it a 10.
iaido
Nobody is a film with a good premise but flawed execution.A minor set of words between two groups of business men (three men in each group), leads to one of them getting beat up. They try find the other group to get revenge, but come up empty handed until late one night they come across one of the rival men in a subway. The three friends beat him severely, so much that they run away, and begin checking the papers to see if they killed him. Soon they begin to get phone calls from the men saying that they have killed the man (though there is no evidence) and slowly they begin to get picked off.Were these men just crazy business men? Bloodthirsty Yakuza? Crooked Cops? Unfortunately these questions and the I Know What You Did Last Summer-like plotline, dont hold up very well, and are clumsy. The deaths, the suspicion, and the finale, fall too far into b-movie territory. The script, direction, and cinematography are lackluster, and with a little fine tuning, some expanding on the cultural side, it could have been a better film. A slightly below average effort.
kwierbate
Nicely filmed, a little uneven, "Nobody" is a good evening's entertainment. The plot is simple enough--three yuppies get into a scrap with a group of strangers in a bar, and it turns out to be much more than they bargained for. The acting is decent, and there are a few unexpected twists. Watch for the completely unbelievable (like the 10 shot revolver, and 25 shot semi-automatic handgun).
AD
