Monday (2000)

User Rating:

7.4/10   

Director:

Hiroyuki Tanaka

Writer:

Hiroyuki Tanaka (writer)

Release Date:

26 January 2001 (Norway)

Genre:

Comedy | Crime | Fantasy | Thriller | Action

Plot:

A simple funeral turns a man's world topsy turvy.

Plot Keywords:

Flashback | Gangster | Alternative Reality | Black Comedy

Awards:

2 wins

Cast

Shin'ichi Tsutsumi	...	Koichi Takagi, the salaryman
Yasuko Matsuyuki	...	Yuko Kirishima, the yakuza girl
Ren Osugi	...	Murai Yoshio, the colleague
Masanobu Ando	...	Mitsuo Kondo, the dead man
Hideki Noda	...	Shingo Kamiyama, strange man of the bar
Akira Yamamoto	...	Kiichiro Hanai, boss of the yakuzas
Naomi Nishida	...	Yuki Machida, Koichi's girlfriend
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Hijiri Kojima
Nanako Ôkôchi
Nao Omori
Susumu Terajima
Kanji Tsuda

Runtime:

100 min

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Colour:

Colour

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Malaysia:U | France:-12 | Germany:16 | Netherlands:16 | Norway:15 | Singapore:PG | Australia:MA

Company:

Cine Qua Non Films

Movie Connections:

Spoofed in Scary Movie 3 (2003)

A Japanese man's descent into insanity

I really wanted to like this movie, but despite some moments of sheer brilliance, it doesn't quite hold together....

As earlier reviewers have already stated, the film centers around a reserved young Japanese man who wakes up in a hotel room unable to remember the day before. He regains his memory little-by-little through flashbacks and little clues from his pockets. He soon learns he is the subject of a national manhunt, for reasons best left to the viewer.

"Monday" switches genres several times in the space of 1 hour and 40 minutes. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is difficult to do well. The first fifteen minutes are brilliant. The funeral scene is expertly timed comic gold....We then veer into absurd "Twin Peaks" territory at the bar, which ends up merely being annoying.

We then enter Tarantino-ville, although the style is really more Dog Day Afternoon vs. American Psycho. The protagonist understands what he has done, and we watch as a very disturbed man goes insane before your very eyes. This is done well, but the film goes off-track again (is it being preachy? is it being tongue-in-cheek?) before ending.

Basicaly, I felt that this is a very original movie and a very original idea that could have been a lot better. I'd like to see what else the director can do.