Golden Slumber

This is a movie that could be a promising mystery/thriller, and does have a capable director and a reasonable cast. However the story itself was so bad that I have no idea how it was even made into a movie.

Just to name a few things that are sorely lacking in this movie without spoiler: 1. No mystery was really solved in this movie. 2. The mystery was not really even developed that much in this movie. 3. How the hero succeeded was nothing short of miracle - multiple miracles in fact. Things that happened really don't make sense in reality.

I could go on to details of which plot holes/coincidences are too incredible but I'd rather not spoil the plot. Suffice to say that there're plenty.

Simply put, if you're looking for a decent mystery/thriller movie, this is NOT it.

I have seen this movie at the Berlinale Film Festival in Germany. For a European, it is always interesting and challenging to learn about Japan. The Japanese culture is so different from the European, so you generally cannot take anything for granted. In particular, this holds even more so for this movie.

It is about playing with the expectations and breaking assumptions, of any audience, constantly, no matter whether it is Japanese or European.

Some examples:

Can you expect to start up a rusty old car sitting in a swamp for years just by inserting a new battery?

Can you imagine a serial killer that is actually a nice boyish guy which acts as a guardian angel sometimes?

Would a mother leave her 3-year old child alone for a while to help some fugitive, to secretly install fireworks in the storm drains? And so on.

That is all what I want to say about the plot. The summary line and these examples must suffice. The absence of any certainties (regarding plot twists as well as underlying assumptions) makes it also bit confusing, but in a good way, though. Still, I think this complexity puzzled many spectators, and this is why there weren't many questions to the producers and the main actor after the festival screening.

Oftentimes in the movie something happens that seems to be completely predetermined, other events happen in a completely unpredictable and even absurd manner. The fact the movie walks on the fine line between determinism and haphazard, makes it also very profound. It is also a statement about the Japanese society and its people - and the many transformations it underwent in the last, say, 100 years. In this movie, most people have a positive attitude towards live and outcomes of their actions, even if bad things happen... murder, betrayal, treachery. Don't take it all too seriously.

I realize that I am trying to unravel the this movie. I have never seen anything like that before. Enjoyed it very much.

Gotta give this one points for originality.

A none-too-bright (at least at the beginning) fellow is set up as the fall guy in a plot to assassinate the Japanese prime minister. He manages to elude capture through chance, and friends who help him, and sheer luck...again, and again, and...againandagainandagain....

Normally I don't watch this kind of flic, although I found myself thinking "but I watched Skyfall just last week...." But there is some great humor here, especially if you have some familiarity with Japanese culture (not all of the gags translate well). The "Death to Gropers!!" line in particular is ROFL funny...given all the sunny slogans that typically are written by Japanese kids in calligraphy class.

I did find myself cringing the third or fourth time a character sang the Beatles' standard "Golden Slumber", typically out of tune. Have the remote ready, and don't be afraid to hammer that fast-forward button.

You might like this if you can ignore the extreme implausibility of eg. your typical James Bond movie, and enjoy intermittent humor, and unexpected twists.

The beginning had a strong opening where I was actually engaged/intrigued, but after the main character makes a "run for it", that is when everything just falls apart, literally (story/pacing), and just becomes a plain, super dragged out, extremely silly and dumb, where things just conveniently happen just for the sake of happening (old man in the hospital... come on now), boring adventure. I can suspend some disbelief, but they end up taking things way too far.

It's like the opening starts out really accelerating with a big bang that grabs your interest -- and you'd think it would be more intense after he makes a run for it, but instead the whole film after that just never picks up the pace/just slows way way down/drags and decides to take a huge cartoon world/scenario approach instead.

It's very obvious things just unnaturally, forcefully occur just for the sake of the director/writer to connect it with another ridiculous silly plot (Oh, those memories of making out in an abandoned crummy old Corolla... oh! let's bring back that nostalgia and have a wife, who knows absolutely nothing about cars, hook up the battery herself to come to the rescue... Just silly.)

The writer of this film clearly is a Beatles fan and believes in the JFK assassination conspiracy/media manipulations.

The plot is about the Prime Minister of Japan being assassinated instead, and it ends up being framed on the main character, where he then makes a run for it. The film is a satire of "Lee Harvey Oswald" being framed for JFK, or "Bin Laden" for 9/11, where the media just needs an "image"/scapegoat.

The idea is very interesting and I was really engaged and excited at first where it was going to end up, but the rest of the film is just absolute torture and disappointing.

Although I cry easily when watching movies, I could not even cry once or find anything touching for this film; I can tell the director tried to throw in all these cheesy touchy moments, but it's so forcefully done, it just makes you roll your eyes and cringe instead. (Seriously... fireworks coming out of manhole covers??? Come on now... That had to be the stupidest thing ever. The wife is some sort of superwoman.)

The problem with this film is that it doesn't know whether to be completely serious or end up going so over-the-top ridiculousness turning into an anime world.

When people start behaving like they do in anime and really over-the-top silly things start to happen, it actually backfires on the realism/suspense - it really takes the audience out of it. It seriously loses its suspense because you just can't take it seriously anymore. It needs consistency, which this film doesn't have.

What made movies like "The Fugitive" suspenseful and exciting is because as over-the-top Hollywood action it may have had, it was still grounded.

The ending "twist" is also not that clever/not worth all that time for that pay off. I felt like the movie was more like 3 hours long; it just really felt that dragged on.

The positive reviews are giving this movie way too much credit than it really is. Overall, the plot had potential, but the film decided to take a cartoon silly approach with an extremely cheesy flashback "going back home" story.

Thsi movie is based on the assassination of President Kennedy. A man who saves an idol from a thug is famous in Sendai, so everyone knows him. However, he is frame of the criminal of assassination. I enjoyed the scenes that compares his reality with his good old days. I was impressed with the scene that the former girlfriend exchanges the battery of the memorable car for the man and the woman to help him. The man remembers the events in the car, so these comparisons highlight that he is in severe situation. I also like the scene that the past friends tries to help him to avoid the police's chase. I can feel their ties because they believe that he does not assassinate up the Prime Minister from their serious and strong-willed expressions. It was also shocked for me that the police hits on the former girlfriend's face. However, I can understand the police's disparate persistence that he would like to capture him. I like this movie because I watched it with tension all the time. I also like the ending since the former girlfriend's daughter stamps on his hand, and the message summarizes the former girlfriend's feeling.