ScoobyWell Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Jemima It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

NateWatchesCoolMovies Bunraku demonstrates exactly what the term 'interesting failure' looks like on screen. It's got some wild elements that never really pull together into a cohesive whole which one can call a successful package, but oh does it ever try. It's basically Yojimbo in a colorful, oddly static world where assassins don't use guns and everyone dresses in samurai costumes designed by Abba. It succeeds with the visual element, drawing inspiration from stylistic tropes like Sin City and the titular form of Japanese puppet theatre bunraku. I know that all sounds like ingredients for an instant classic, and yeah it should be. However, things don't always work out and we are left instead with a lively piece that can't overcome it's laggy, strange pace and ultimately uninvolving story. Josh Hartnett is solid as The Drifter, a lone warrior who comes to town looking for revenge, bringing along his companion Yoshi (Japanese pop idol Gackt). The town is a technicolor zen garden and bursting with enthusiastic production design, ruled over by a ruthless and reclusive crime boss named Nicola (Ron Perlman under a bushy nest of snowy dreadlocks). Many a battle ensues, all rather staccato and without the ruckus of gunfire. I was reminded heavily of the final fight scene between Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu in Tarantino's Kill Bill. It's neat that they payed homage here, if a little overly obvious and without added originality. Drifter is assisted by a pacifist bartender (Woody Harrelson, barely registering on the acting seismic meter), and Alexandra (Demi Moore) Nicola's concubine. This might have been something special had a little more effort been put into greasing up the tracks of the plot with some life, instead of mainly focusing on making action scenes that have wandered right out of a painting. They are impressive for what they are, though, and I suppose worth a watch. Just don't look beneath the brushstrokes for a heartbeat or brainwaves.

popcorninhell On the cusp of this deceptively simple film is a near universal acknowledgement of style over substance. It's even in the name Bunraku which is a form of traditional Japanese puppeteer-ing. The opening credits of the film plods with nonsensical narration brought by a cynical voice and colorful puppetry mixed with economical computer graphics. We're submerged into a world of paper mache, all the world is a stage and all the players almost seem to notice. With a wink and a nod they dance around each other; a cowboy, a samurai, a woodcutter, an assassin, a barkeep and a maiden. All the world is a stage and pulling the strings are the dexterous hands and wide eyes of a teenage boy. Deceptively simple because it is an indulgence similar to youth's long hours with toys at the foot of the bed or after midnight's Kung Fu marathons.Yet there's more than meets the eye here. The script's sometimes frustratingly scant dialogue circles around the notion of violence. Its not one of those films that admonishes violence while inviting the audience to enjoy stylized buckets of blood. It's a film that tries to posit violence as part of the cyclical machinations of the universe. What matters is how you use violence; towards selfish ends or selfless ends. Our heroes, the drifter and the samurai fight for good, in a sense. Their families were effected by the woodcutter and his gang, thus they battle to reclaim their family honor. A simple story of revenge told hundreds of times across multiple cultures and mediums. Even the characters in the plot are aware of their place in the larger story. The barkeep, played by an affable Woody Harrelson even props up a pop-up book telling a similar heroic tale. The tale he tells though the names are changed is that of Spider-Man; confirmed by the moral of the story "with great power comes great responsibility."The story goes deeper into the depths of political and moral philosophy with the inclusion of a character known as The General. His Proletariat League remains in the periphery until the third act. The character is treated as a phantom which prods the Woodcutters gang to remove his iconography. Then he appears a withered old man reminiscent of an aging Fidel Castro. He's waited, perhaps too long, to strike against the woodcutter and his gang which control the city. Does he, by the end of the film replace a politically violent reign with another? Maybe, but the movie strongly adheres to the cyclical nature of human politics. When Harrelson's character insists he makes the drinks and fought only so he could continue to make the drinks, our two heroes seems disappointed. As if to say when good men do nothing, evil prevails. The movie then ends with a Rising Sun Flag doubling as the sun itself. Fascism and cruelty still lurks in the shadows or in this case, the light.Yet the draw of a movie of this kind is not a flaccid political statement or a hero's journey we all can recite by heart. Most films, with noted exceptions are like Christmas trees, its not the structure but the decorations that set them apart. And there are a lot of decorations. Bunraku is nearly an entire product of pastiche. The city home to our players is constructed to look cheap as if made on a sound stage, as it likely was. The walls are paper thin, dominated by harsh masculine edges and aside from beer bottles and bifocals, there is no glass in the windows. The unnatural light shifts suddenly from blue to red and orange to create an atmosphere of dread, anger and fear depending on the situation. Its as if The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) was remade into a gangster movie. The vibrant costumes take hints from Bollywood, the scene transitions are pop art, the characters an amalgam of ronins, cowboys and grizzled private dicks; east meets west meets points in between.Make no mistake, this movie is a masterpiece and not in an ironic sense either. Frazzled and rough around the edges to be sure, but nonetheless Bunraku reveals a masterful depth. It follows in a cinematic tradition while bringing a rare gust of originality that can make you question how to truly make and interpret a lie that tells the truth. All the worlds a stage and in this case, I'd get a front row seat right quick.

siderite I imagine when Quentin Tarantino saw this film, he went mad with envy. It's just up his alley, only without so much obnoxious dialogue and a lot more style. In fact, style is the major asset of this movie as the story itself is just a prop, a carefully placed cliché put there only to emphasize the amount of effort put in the visual styling of the film.Bunraku is a Japanese form of theatre that involves puppets, instrumental music and singers. The film is structured like that, with over the top characters like puppets, a narrator in place of singers (thank God!) and a melange of instrumental Japanese music and American rock and roll.But Bunraku is not perfect. One of the major points I had was with the sound, people kept whispering for dramatic effect right before engines and sword fighting brought on a deluge of volume. It's difficult to watch this without either accepting loud noises or not hearing everything that is being said. Another disappointment, I guess, was the ending, which wasn't really thought through. The cliché was done, exposed, brought all it needed to do; at the end, the writer should have destroyed it with an original and creative finale. They did not do that.Bottom line: If you liked Sin City or Tarantino films, you are going to like this one, as well. It has a stellar cast: Ron Perlman, Josh Hartnett, Woody Harrelson, Demi Moore, Kevin McKidd (doing his best to impersonate Christopher Eccleston, I guess?). Did I mention Ron Perlman? They all seemed to have fun doing the film, so why not have fun watching it?

kevinc0722 I saw this movie randomly on TV, without expectations, and I just can't finish it, and that's pretty rare for me.The cast was wonderful, but the end result just don't justify it. The film was a fusion of sin city plus kill bill plus a large chunk of "I want to be different and artsy-fartsy", and I just don't like what came out of the blender. The script is plain, the art direction was too intentional, and the fight scenes are like watching a crappy cartoon.I loved sin city, I loved kill bill, but Bunraku just isn't even near the same ball park as those. It's fine when a film have a low budget, crappy script and cheesy effects, at least they don't pretend to be something else, but trying to run before you can walk, art direction wise, is just a big no no for me. To create the new, you gotta first know the old.This film might be entertaining for some who likes to see some eastern flavors in a movie, but growing up watching a good share of films from both the east and the west, the amount of cliché of both types annoys me.A film that wasted a great cast.