BunrakuEven loners will band together for a common cause. Bunraku is a stylish action film about a pair of traveling fighters--a nameless "Drifter" (Josh Hartnett) and a Japanese samurai named Yoshi (Gackt). The two travelers come to a city in the iron grip of "Nicola the Woodcutter" (Ron Perlman), a deadly warrior who controls the city through his gang of "red suits" and "killers". After the two visitors trade blows in the Horseless Horseman Saloon, the "Bartender" (Woody Harrelson) suggests that they should team up to put an end to Nicola and his reign of terror.
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Bunraku resembles a comic book come to life in its stylistic flourishes and outlandish plot and setting, similar to films like Sin City and The Spirit. The film begins with a whimsical title sequence, set to jovial music, that sets the proverbial (and literal) stage for a story that is a few steps removed from reality. An anachronistic pantomime elaborates on the history of violence in this pop-up world. It describes how after an apocalyptic war, the world is rebuilt and firearms are discarded, making martial arts and swordplay the new standard in killing once again. This is the justification for why powerful warriors like Nicola and his pale henchman--known only as Killer No. 2 (Kevin McKidd)--are able to exploit their martial prowess to command positions of prestige; it also justifies copious scenes of acrobatic combat, tense swordplay, and brutal fisticuffs between the two heroes and their depraved opponents. The setting of Bunraku is ambiguous, but merges Western and Eastern motifs; the Bartender's saloon has a Wild West vibe to it, while Nicola's headquarters couldn't be more Japanese, even though he resembles a medieval barbarian. Bright colors dominate Bunraku, suffusing the film with a vivid and hyper-real quality that recalls the Bartender's pop-up book--his hobby between pouring drinks. The backgrounds and scene transitions play to this "pop-up book" aesthetic, including artificial looking suns made of paper. The film is theatrical, with lighting that recalls a stage production, like when an impromptu spotlight is cast on a character. Bunraku actively avoids realism at times, like when a phone call is made between Killer No. 2 and one of his lackeys, played as though the vile henchmen were threatening his lackey from the same room. The martial arts the killers use vary from kendo to capoeira--and even circus acrobatics--in each face off, infusing Bunraku with the milestone-driven action set pieces often found in Eastern martial arts films. The Drifter is a stand-in for the "Man with No Name" from Spaghetti Westerns--a cool cowboy who brawls in taverns, drinks whiskey, gambles, and has an unusual habit of sniffing a cigarette instead of actually smoking it; his fear of heights appears to be his only weakness.
Bunraku takes its name from a style of Japanese puppet theater, featuring near life-sized marionettes often manipulated by multiple puppeteers to give them a life-like quality. Because these puppets are so detailed and larger than others, they possess a quality that is somewhere between real and unreal--this is the same effect conveyed in Bunraku. When the Drifter breaks Yoshi out of prison, the camera is positioned from an angle that shows the Drifter moving from level to level, taking out generic cops with quick strikes while video game sound effects punctuate every blow--it is as if the scene were a level out of a coin-operated arcade machine. When the Bartender drives his tiny car to escape the red suits' uniformly red vehicles, the sounds of a pinball machine are heard as the enemies collide with each other. Even the encounters with the unique killers by the Drifter and Yoshi are like "boss fights" from a beat-em-up video game. The world of Bunraku is a pastiche of elements from different times and places, merged together into a collage setting. The vivid gangster suits that the bad guys wear--along with the saturated color palette--looks similar to Dick Tracy, and the enigmatic and aloof Drifter roaming through this comic-book setting has echoes of Streets of Fire. Yoshi and his family speak Japanese, and the integrated subtitles are displayed like captions in a comic book. After the Bartender unites the Drifter and Yoshi to dethrone Nicola, he produces paper cutouts of each of them that look like comic book interpretations of them. All of the characters in Bunraku are designed to be two-dimensional interpretations of heroes and villains from other stories. Nicola is an anachronistic antagonist; he is an introspective murderer who waxes philosophical and picks flowers from his Japanese garden, yet shaves with his hatchet and wears his hair in savage braids. These paradoxical styles make Nicola stand out as an exception in this papercraft world, which implies that as an unknown quantity, he must be more dangerous. Nicola's "depth" represents him as more of a "three-dimensional" character than the rest. This is the reason that Drifter and Yoshi must team up to fell Nicola, because they are two heroes that look as though they were cut out of their respective stories and pasted into this hodge-podge universe-- diversity is the edge they need to emerge victorious.
Recommended for: Fans of a jazzy hybrid of a martial arts film and a Western, portrayed with a vivid palette that resembles a comic book. Bunraku features wry narration by the incomparable Mike Patton, which accentuates the tongue-in-cheek humor and the collage-like world these characters occupy.
Bunraku takes its name from a style of Japanese puppet theater, featuring near life-sized marionettes often manipulated by multiple puppeteers to give them a life-like quality. Because these puppets are so detailed and larger than others, they possess a quality that is somewhere between real and unreal--this is the same effect conveyed in Bunraku. When the Drifter breaks Yoshi out of prison, the camera is positioned from an angle that shows the Drifter moving from level to level, taking out generic cops with quick strikes while video game sound effects punctuate every blow--it is as if the scene were a level out of a coin-operated arcade machine. When the Bartender drives his tiny car to escape the red suits' uniformly red vehicles, the sounds of a pinball machine are heard as the enemies collide with each other. Even the encounters with the unique killers by the Drifter and Yoshi are like "boss fights" from a beat-em-up video game. The world of Bunraku is a pastiche of elements from different times and places, merged together into a collage setting. The vivid gangster suits that the bad guys wear--along with the saturated color palette--looks similar to Dick Tracy, and the enigmatic and aloof Drifter roaming through this comic-book setting has echoes of Streets of Fire. Yoshi and his family speak Japanese, and the integrated subtitles are displayed like captions in a comic book. After the Bartender unites the Drifter and Yoshi to dethrone Nicola, he produces paper cutouts of each of them that look like comic book interpretations of them. All of the characters in Bunraku are designed to be two-dimensional interpretations of heroes and villains from other stories. Nicola is an anachronistic antagonist; he is an introspective murderer who waxes philosophical and picks flowers from his Japanese garden, yet shaves with his hatchet and wears his hair in savage braids. These paradoxical styles make Nicola stand out as an exception in this papercraft world, which implies that as an unknown quantity, he must be more dangerous. Nicola's "depth" represents him as more of a "three-dimensional" character than the rest. This is the reason that Drifter and Yoshi must team up to fell Nicola, because they are two heroes that look as though they were cut out of their respective stories and pasted into this hodge-podge universe-- diversity is the edge they need to emerge victorious.
Recommended for: Fans of a jazzy hybrid of a martial arts film and a Western, portrayed with a vivid palette that resembles a comic book. Bunraku features wry narration by the incomparable Mike Patton, which accentuates the tongue-in-cheek humor and the collage-like world these characters occupy.