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Dora-heita
Threat advisory: Guarded - General risk of entertaining activities
Movie propaganda
Dora-heita
tells the story of an unusual struggle between a newly-appointed magistrate and a gang of mean rogues in a small Japanese town. Koji Yakusho stars as the samurai, Koheita Mochizuki, in this humorous and enjoyable film.Also starring Yuko Asano as Kosei, Ryudo Uzaki as Giyouro Senba, Tsurutaro Kataoka as Hanso Yasukawa and Bunta Sugawara as Nadahachi. Based on the novel Diary of a town magistrate by Shugoro Yamamoto, screenplay by Ichikawa, Akira Kurosawa, Keisuke Kinoshita and Masaki Kobayashi. Directed by Kon Ichikawa.
Cinematic intelligence sources
- Awards and film festivals:
- NB: Japanese language dialogue with English language subtitles
Intelligence analyst
Special Agent Matti
Theatrical report
Fun and games in samurai land.If you've ever watched a Japanese samurai flick then Dora-heita will bring back a few memories. The high ideals of the original samurai are upheld by the hero and rent asunder by the villains. In this case the hero is only masquerading as a hard-core party boy in order to do his detective work in downtown Horisoto. There's intrigue as Mochizuki uncovers layer upon layer of corruption from the lowest to the highest level. What's more, there's a Triad operating on the loose, paying hush money to the officials at the town hall. What's even more... u minutes... What's more, is that not every friend is a friend and not every enemy is an enemy. James Bond eat your heart out.
Koji makes mince meat of his medieval undercover agent, gobbling up the swordplay, the fighting, the loving, the sneakiness, the drinking... like turkey at Christmas. He also makes meat loaf of the baddie boys who cross his path: decimating the heavies and out-manoeuvring the bosses. (This is what Brown's requiem should've been like.) Yuko is hilarious as the spurned geisha who hot-foots it from Ddo to hunt down her light-footed paramour while Ryudo makes as nasty a friend as you'd ever want to have.
Dora-heita is a fun flick (especially for a nippophone) although it never rises to the heights of, say, The bone collector or Romeo must die. If you're in the mood for some movie sushi, go for your life!
FYI: Dora-heito means both playboy and alley cat.
Security censorship classification
*
Surveillance time
111 minutes (1:51 hours)
Not for public release in Australia before date
9 June 2000
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