Iconic Japanese tough guy & comic, actor/writer/director Takeshi Kitano, now in his mid-70s, is old enough to have GAMBIT in mind here. Not the regrettable Coen Brothers redo of 2012, but the likable Shirley MacLaine/Michael Caine 1966 original, an art caper with the catchy ad copy: Go Ahead, Tell the End; But Please Don’t Tell the Beginning! It’s referring to the film’s opening two reels where a planned heist is shown being perfectly executed before jumping back to show how it actually plays out with one fuck up after another making hash out of best laid plans.* That’s the idea Kitano picks up on here, except this is no art caper, but the working life of veteran hit man Kitano, showing how he delivers on two hits and one undercover sting op. The first three reels as he imagines them, perfectly executed, then as they really play out with everything going disastrously wrong. Oops, SPOILER ALERT!! Sorry ‘bout that . . . But not really, because knowing in advance is what makes the first half, the Things Go Right half, far, far funnier than the sporadic laughs generated in the repeated action of the second half. Something about Kitano, with his stocky frame and impassive face, as he gracefully hits every mark perfectly in his imagination is completely hilarious, especially when you account for the physical limitations of weight & age. The second half is okay (particularly during the repeat of the second hit job), but it needs more Inspector Clouseau slapstickery than Kitano can deliver. (Rowan Atkinson? Bill Hader? How far away from BARRY are we?) Still, pretty funny stuff, knowing & amusingly ‘meta’ when Kitano panics over his film’s short running time.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *That GAMBIT ad copy made the fake-out prologue sound fresh & new, though it was much used even then. Going back, at least, to Preston Sturges’s UNFAITHFULLY YOURS/’48 in a waking dream sequence that sees world-famous conductor Rex Harrison imagining the perfect murder of unfaithful wife Linda Darnell before botching its . . . er . . . execution when he tries to follow thru on the idea. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/06/gambit-1966.html
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