Tuesday 22 May 2012

Kaiji the Ultimate Gambler (2009)



The Most Dangerous Game:

Is a Card Game ???

The starts out with Tatsuya Fujiwara's character Kaiji being beaten up; this is slightly amusing because in Death Note his character was basically untouchable or just believed that he was. Now when this film was released it seemed that it ran with the Japanese theme of the Card Game being the ultimate weapon like in Yu-Gi-Oh for example and characters react to the proposal of playing a child’s Card Game with a What the Fuck!!

At this point it is clear that the director is trying to make fun of the concept that a Card Game can solve everyone problems, well the Games is intense and is almost like Battle Royale in the sense that none of the characters can trust each other but the Narrative is from Kaiji's prospective. Which sounds boring but when fights are braking out every 5 seconds and this takes the main focus away from Kaiji.



The Card Games is a simple Rock, Paper, Scissors which Kaiji loses after being trick and the concept appears to be like Liar Game; the then proceed to change direction for a while and shows the losers of the Card Games as slaves to the system. Kaiji mindless spends his money on Beer and treats, right upon until he is introduced to Kenichi Matsuyama's character Makoto Sahara which is the real reason I watched this film. Like in Death Note he has an invocative that the other characters do not and potentially moves the story in some form of direction and if it was not for him Kaiji would live in a hole for the rest of the plot. No lie;

When Kaiji realises that he has to fight to survive it starts to feel like the ultimate Game of Death, this has nothing to do with Card and more killing of Characters.




The characters decide to play another Game which involves them walking a pole which hangs over two high building and potentially fall to their Deaths.

But what happened to the Card Games?

Well like most survival Games it is to see who will survive till the end, plus it is to show how corrupt rich people are toward people who are working class, everyone falls like flies and this is no surprise because with every survival game in any film only one or to survive. This is to make the main characters look special but it comes across as corny. The reason for this is : If it is that difficult to survive this quest? Then why are you the only one who survived? Innocent people died.



That last picture pretty much explains Tatsuya Fujiwara's Character profile and at this point of the film he has cried a hell of a lot so as a viewer I want the film to just end.

“I don't care if He Wins or Loses at this point"
"But the madness has to End"



The scene build up and yes Kaiji wins; maybe he will cry about it later?
Then the scene goes

"Blah blah blah, I am bleeding blah, I Won you blah...."


Anyway the film ends with Kaiji forgetting about everyone who Died in the story and he is robbed by Rinko Endo, the woman who got him to start to Gamble with his money
So it is a Happy Ending in my opinion. He does give the last of his money to the olds man’s relative but the whole films seemed to drag a little.........



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