Wage War

Mysskin never made a secret of his admiration for Kurosawa Akira and Kitano Takeshi – in fact in Nandalala (2010) he made a beautiful variation on the latter’s Kikujiro (1999), as full of personal childhood reminiscences as the Japanese original. Therefore, it seems okay to describe Wage War, his police procedural turning social exposé turning metaphysical rumination on the nature of truth, as a positively unnerving mix of Kurosawa at his most noir and Kitano in an especially foul mood.

Some of the names and references made in Wage War are very Mysskin: there is a medical examiner called Judas Iscariot (now, that’s Dostojevskijan!), and an investigator nicknamed J.K. (as in radical philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurthi?). But then it probably takes characters with an aura of extravagance to tackle a crime that starts with cardboard boxes full of hacked-off limbs by way of a New Year’s greeting!

Also see Pisasu.