Takeshis' (English Subtitles) Customer Reviews

Being a Takeshi fan I had to get this. The story was great and the visuals were awesome. Great music also. Some action and minor sex scenes in the movie.

As for the plot, the previous reviewers have already said everything. For the film itself, I am not quite sure. It's just OK in my opinion, not nearly as memorable as "Brother" or "Zatoichi", for example. I might say it's a good film, but something that doesn't make me explode with excitement in the end. The storyline gets indeed a bit hard to follow at times, but it's got some excellent scenes and funny, hilarious moments. The characters are brilliantly played - all of them, of course. The 2 Takeshis could not be more different, yet physically identical. Kitano the clerk is a bit of a sad character. He looks sort of "dettached", and melancholy at times, like someone who needs a hug! And compulsively obsessed with his idol, Beat Takeshi. The references to his previous films are very good. It's very entertaining to look at these scenes and recognise the allusions to his other works, such as "Hana-bi", "Kikujiro" and so on. If you are a Kitano's fan, this is a must-have, even though you might be expecting a bit more and be perhaps slightly disappointed. Even if I am not entirely convinced yet, I am glad to have purchased it, since I love the man! :)

Zatoichi was allways going to be a tough act to follow, Beat Takeshi returns with his wildly surreal "Takeshis'", in which Beat Takeshi (played by Takeshi) meets a man who strangely resembles himself (also played by Takeshi), he then proceeds to dream about what his lookalike's life is really like, tieing in people he knows into his dream, it may be somewhat bewildering but its a hilarious film in which Beat Takeshi pokes fun at himself, his stereotypical yakuza character and what the public believe him to be.

Takeshis' finds him playing two roles: one is a version of his real-life actor persona, Beat Takeshi; the other is a mild-mannered convenience store clerk/amateur actor named Kitano. The lives and the dreams of the two men intersect and parallel each other continuously throughout the film. Actors, scenes, and elements from Kitano's other films (Sonatine, Kikujiro, Brother, and Zatoichi to name a few) show up frequently as the two men have waking dreams involving each other's lives. The Beat Takeshi of the film is almost a stylized version of his real self, as the public might perceive him. This feeds into the fantasies of the clerk Kitano, who dreams of being Beat Takeshi, taking out his frustrations with the world in a hail of gunfire, just like in the movies. The film is constantly jumping between reality and fantasy, from one character to another, rooted in the present but with flashes into the future. It can make it difficult to follow at times, leaving you to wonder whose perspective is being shown on screen and whether it exists in the dream world or the real world or something in between.