Back in the 1990s there was a spate of Japanese movies about alienated young guys who roamed the streets or countryside with a gun, a girl and an attitude. But "Nihonsei Shonen (The Boy Made in Japan)" (1995), "Secret Waltz" (1996) and other films inspired by Hollywood criminal-couples-on-the-road movies seemed to unfold in a fantasy world. This, after all, is Japan, where the closest young rebels come to actual bang-bang action is a fireworks display.
Kazuyoshi Kumakiri's "Freesia (Freesia -- Bullet Over Tears)," based on an eponymous manga by Jiro Matsumoto, has most of the abovementioned qualities, including the unreality, but is not, like its predecessors, an exercise in directorial wish-fulfillment. Instead, it takes the more honest course of allegorical, dystopian division.
Set in a near-future Japan where revenge-for-hire has become legally sanctioned -- a throwback to the customs of the Edo Period -- "Freesia" has an artistic license to kill. Its gunplay is cool enough, with slick moves by both Tetsuji Tamayama, as the affectless hero, and editor Mototaka Kusakabe, whose quick, deft cutting adds impact to otherwise pedestrian action scenes. But the film has more on its mind than its own stylistics, thoroughly realized as they are.
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