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Highly Overrated But Still Good

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

I found this film in the local library, and thought I'd check it out for two reasons. Firstly, Drunken Angel is an old Japanese movie. Second, the plot seemed very interesting. The movie just happens to be so slow-paced that most of that plot just flows through. I usually enjoy somewhat slow films, but for some reason Drunken Angel was weirdly boring. Of course it was a great movie, with amazing writing and dialogue, but it just isn't something I like.The use of music was astonishing. Even if the scenes were slow and it was easy to start thinking about something else, the music made those scenes more intensive, which definitely made me pay more attention.But it's really hard to say anything about the movie. It is good, that I can say for sure, but somehow it just doesn't stand out as much as I hoped it would be. It blends in. Of course it may have something to do with culture differences - and time difference!

DRUNKEN ANGEL sees the master of Japanese cinema, Akira Kurosawa, on solid form in the simplistic tale of the developing friendship between an alcoholic doctor and a dying gangster who comes to him for help. While the story is set very noticeably in a poor, run-down, post-WW2 Japan, the story is one which brims with life and vitality, which is somewhat ironic given the subject matter.The calibre of the acting is second to none which is no surprise for fans of the director. Takashi Shimura underpins the whole thing as the titular character, a stressed-out doctor battling the bottle as well as the problems of his various associates and patients, but it's Toshiro Mifune who gives the stand-out turn here. This was the star's first collaboration with Kurosawa and it comes as no surprise that the pair would go on to re-team many times in the future. Mifune's performance as the small-fry gangster, addicted to drinking and partying and yet suffering from the effects of tuberculosis, is one of his greats.Kurosawa's cinematography is another winner here, and there are some fine moments of tension including a great, extended fight scene at the climax. My favourite moment is a bizarre dream sequence in which Mifune is chased along a beach by a corpse only to find himself trapped in a slow motion run. It's one of the few times that the director went for outright horror (along with THRONE OF BLOOD) and it makes me wish he had made an all-out horror film at least once in his career.

The first of 16 collaborations between Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. Upon hearing that you would imagine some kind of amazing back story shared between the two, but the wonderful reality was that Mifune simply auditioned and impressed Kurosawa enough he won the part. Simple beginnings had lead to everlasting impressions, and we are now blessed with a series of movies that continue to influence and hold up today.The wonderful Takashi Shimura stars as an alcoholic doctor in postwar Japan, who ends up treating an angry, young small-time hood (Toshiro Mifune). The doctor eventually diagnoses the young gangster with tuberculosis, and convinces him to begin treatment and stop such a destructive lifestyle. The pair keep bumping into each other that leads to a love/hate friendship, as the Yakuza group is certainly creeping into each others lifestyle.Whilst the story itself isn't particularly the best of Kurosawa's work, the most impressive aspects of the production is that Kurosawa managed to make what he wanted to, given the fact he had to comply with censorship issue by the U.S Government. Released during the occupation, he managed to satirise lifestyles, Jazz and clothing all to great effect. Final Verdict: The acting is stellar, and Kurosawa proves to be more than effective at telling a subtle Yakuza flick. 8/10.

'Drunken Angel' is uncompromising in the way it explores a cruel reality. Post-war Japan was hardly the nicest of places and the still dilapidated capital is represented here by a festering pond of contaminated water that is compared to a swamp. In this environment a very rough doctor with the habit of overindulging in alcohol strikes a troubled friendship with a young yakuza suffering (and in denial) from tuberculosis.Unlike so many movies featuring mobsters this does not focus on gun fights and action. Instead it's a character study of a young man who despite his feisty personality is still naive enough to believe in ideas of honor and value in the world of the yakuza. The movie's loyalty to realism demolishes these illusions in a convincing and poignant way.Apart from psychological development on a personal level there is also a bitter but lucid social critic on a society that expects women to submit to men as slaves and where bullying the weak is part of the status quo. Men too are victims of a system that forces them not to express weakness or fear at any times to the point they are cornered into self destructive behavior.But there is no easy moralizing or cheap redemptions to balance the pervading darkness. Which is not to say that this is a movie completely without hope. But it is a reasonable hope, the kind that is rooted in the uncompromising reality that limits it considerably. And perhaps for that very reason it seems so precious.Tragedy is done without dramatic fanfare and strikes a chord precisely for that. Disease, both of the body and of the soul, is shown with all its brutality and almost seems to be a symbol of an overall decadence that covers Tokyo. The strict realism is only interrupted by a dream sequence that is haunting in the extreme.'Drunken Angel' relies almost solely on the dynamic between the two leads played by Mifune and Shimura. Their interaction is full of conflict but laced with affection as well. An unlikely hero in the figure of the doctor and an unlikely yakuza in Matsunaga, the match is odd and rough around the edges. And that, too, results in a coherence of lucid and moving realism.