Review | Cannes 2023: Kubi movie review – Takeshi Kitano’s gory samurai epic sees the Japanese auteur return to his entertaining best
- Set in Japan’s Warring States period when samurai warlords fought to rule the country, Kitano’s historical epic is full of battles, decapitations and dark humour
- While it might be difficult to keep up with the complex web of characters, Kubi is such an exhilarating ride at times that it scarcely matters
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4/5 stars
Six years after his last film, the trilogy-completing yakuza tale Outrage Coda, Japanese auteur “Beat” Takeshi Kitano is back to his bloody best.
The opening shot of Kubi, a historical samurai tale he’s tried to make for 30 years, is of crabs scuttling around the fleshy neck of a headless corpse. Minutes later, the volatile Lord Nobunaga (Ryo Kase) is forcing an underling to eat a sweet from the end of his sword, which he promptly grinds into the man’s mouth.
Set in the late 16th century, at a time Japan was rife with feuding warlords, the movie begins as Nobunaga’s vassal, Araki Murashige (Kenichi Endo) organises a rebellion. The enraged Nobunaga sends Akechi Mitsuhide (Hidetoshi Nishijima) to track him down, unaware that he and Murashige are lovers.
This description barely does justice, however, to a complex web of characters who weave in and out of Kitano’s story. Thankfully, the director recognises the difficulties in keeping up with the plot, and each major player is introduced with their names on the screen.
But even if you fail to grasp the nuances, Kubi is such an exhilarating ride at times that it scarcely matters. From mid-air fights to vast battles, from female ninja assassins to castles set ablaze, there’s plenty to feast your eyes upon.
Premiering out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival, Kubi will naturally be compared to Zatoichi (2003), Kitano’s electric take on the blind swordsman saga by Japanese novelist Kan Shimozawa. This isn’t quite on that level, but it’s an ambitious and elaborately staged film.
Kubi is also replete with Kitano’s midnight-black sense of humour, not least one scene where a character is decapitated, his head falls into the water, bobbing up and down, as another person tries in vain to retrieve it.
The performances are predictably larger than life, especially from the highly entertaining Kase as Nobunaga, and Kitano fans will surely get a kick out of seeing him back on the big screen.
Motivations, beyond Machiavellian power-grabbing, are thin on the ground. But we do get the sense that madness is setting in as characters perform increasingly sick acts on each other. As the wise Sorori puts it, “They’re all out of their minds!”
