With his grizzled Humphrey Bogart looks and impressive acting abilities, actor Koji Yakusho built a 15-year career that’s made him the Tom Hanks of Japan. You’d never guess this from The World of Kanako, where he plays rage-on-tap ex-cop Akikazu Fujishima who sweats, screams and smashes his way through the entire film like a one-note Hulk. He’s searching for his missing daughter, Kanako. As we follow his lead, we’re lost in a world of lurid clues and stomach-wrenching violence.
Unreliable memories are thematic goldmines for film noir; with classic noir elements held in the hands of award-winning auteur Tetsuya Nakashima, there’s potential for something interesting. Such gems are thrown in with shades of Pulp Fiction and pulverized through a high tech blender. What’s left is no mystery. Kanako is a femme fatale with a secret life, and the taunting hyper-references to her past via photos and mostly pathetic characters are redundantly played. What Fujishima learns of his daughter through flashbacks and shady sources—quickly prove unsatisfying and untrustworthy. Yet not even the cinematic style holds fresh. Excessive jump cuts repeatedly aim over the same images, we hear the same redundant lines, and it’s all against a contrived operatic or J-pop soundtrack … which makes this splatter fest as exciting as overchewed bubblegum.
If the film is an indictment of modern Japanese culture, with the older generation’s lack of awareness of what its youth is up to, there’s no clear perspective on where the director stands. It relentlessly shows cartoonish, unfeeling characters succumbing to a maze of sex and violence, then mocks them, giving them and us no way out. How and why they succumb is not addressed. The rare moments in the film when the frenzied search and slaughter ceases, where we might possibly find surprising redemption in a character, quickly reverts back to cliché. It’s not only impossible to get hold of who Kanako or her world is really about, we no longer care.
Based on Akio Fukamachi’s novel, loosely translated as “Thirst”, it’s little wonder that fury is the only reaction Fujishima can muster. A foiled anti-hero, pumped up on loss and frustration, he is trapped in a frenetic, senseless world of Kanako’s—and partially his own—making. Unfortunately, for the duration of this film, it feels like we’re trapped in it too. Some viewers might enjoy getting pummeled inside a senseless pinball machine. If you appreciate a fine and subtler touch, this film is not for you.
