Brother is a Japanese Yakuza movie set in an American gangster environment. This is a film by the very skilled Takeshi Kitano but we've heard that this movie was considered as one of the worst in his collection. The movie is completely immersed in western culture and context perhaps for that reason it was less liked by his fans. The story is about a Yakuza who travels to a completely foreign land after life in Japan is destroyed, this movie was both reflective and coldly violent. The story wasn't anything new but how it developed was very nice to see, easy to follow and enjoyable as well.

You almost had a unique mix of characters in this movie, a very smooth collage of Japanese Yakuza and African American Gangsters. The movie had many characters but even the secondary characters were made important, no character was left in the background. An example was the big burly bodyguard, he never says a word in the movie yet he has a certain presence and importance. The main characters themselves were pretty much incredible, an excellent performance by Takeshi Kitano, he plays the brutal Yakuza so very well. The characters are the soul in this movie because there are lot of sub themes like friendship or honor and its these characters that bring it to life.

Did we mention this movie was violent, as in really violent. If there is ever an American release it is definitely going to have many cut scenes. The violence is in the form of shootings and I say shootings because it is portrayed realistically unlike more fanciful gun fights and in physical acts of brutality. These scenes are nicely spread out through the movie and there is just enough so the action is not overdone. The violent scenes have a certain shock value, it's the kind of things you don't expect, some of these scenes will have a lasting shock effect as the movie goes on. The action and story come together fine and keeps the movie very entertaining.

The subtitles were very good on the DVD version but considering half the movie was in English, the dialogs were extremely easy to follow. We mentioned that this movie was considered one of the worst movies ever made by Takeshi Kitano, personally we liked it very much. Not being too familiar with his works, we are curious to see his other movies. If they are better than this one, then they would be pretty much incredible. Brother is a movie that can appeal to general western audiences due to the setting, most often the turn off from foreign films are the language and culture. This movie mixed Japanese and North American culture very well. We enjoyed this movie very much and we are sure that anyone who enjoys triad or yakuza movies will enjoy this one.