Takeshis'

Completed back in 2005 and left to mature on the shelves of its distributor, ‘Takeshis’’ is the opening chapter of a now-completed trilogy of self-flagellating films in which Japanese renaissance man Takeshi Kitano pulls apart his public and professional personae. Kitano stars as revered actor-director ‘Beat’ Takeshi Kitano, while also taking the role of a nebbish, peroxide-blond shop clerk called Mr Kitano who aspires to reach the hardman heights of his idol. The film is a series of jokes, self-referential winks (mainly to moments from his own Zen yakuza oeuvre) and overlapping visual motifs, as we witness the high-rolling, gun-blasting world of ‘Beat’ Takeshi as imagined by Mr Kitano. It’s a film that defies any deciphering of its spiralling Lynchian vortex and instead just invites you to run along with it. It may falter in the final third, but it’s a reminder of Kitano’s rapier wit and deadpan directorial flair