Sabu (2002)

Starring:
Tatsuya Fujiwara as Eiji
Satoshi Tsumabuki as Sabu
Tomoko Tabata as Onobu
Kazue Fukiishi as Osue
Kenji Sawada as Okayasu
Naomasa Rokudaira as Matsuda
Tatsuo Yamada as Ryojiro Kojima
Yoshiki Arizono as Yohei
Keisuke Horibe
Kenichi Endo as Giichi
Naomasa Musaka
Mayuko Nishiyama as Osono
Ren Osugi as Heizo
Hiroshi Tamaki as Kinta
Yoji Tanaka as Toku

Set in the Tokugawa Era, Sabu centers around three characters. Eiji and Sabu have been friends since childhood. They've gone through a lot together. Eiji has always been dubbed as a troublemaker and Sabu always manages to come to his aid. They befriend a young woman named Nobuko, a girl who seems to be fated for prostitution by a man who years earlier tried to do the same to her sister, resulting in her killing herself. Eiji gets framed for stealing a piece of gold cloth and given his dodgy reputation, is sent off to an island workhouse camp, unbeknownst to Sabu.

He proceeds to find out what happened to Eiji, much to the chagrin of the town. For in an era where honour is such a high commodity, criminals are better left forgotten, even by those who care about them. Sabu forgoes this practice and finds out about Eiji's crime. Knowing that he is innocent, he goes about investigating the true culprit, enlisting the help of Nobuko and several others. The plot then twists and turns in a very slow and unexciting manner until the inevitable revelation and conclusion.

Okay, I was looking forward to this. First off, this was directed by Miike Takashi. Renowned director of shock, gore, horror. This movie is his first "decent" time period piece.

Umm? This movie was not even close to what we are used to. I knew it would be different but I didn't realize it would be boring and plain. WTF? I sat through this hoping for some twist.....something. Nothing. It even ended happily. WTF?

Now I'm all for nice endings and all but this movie had nothing to keep one satisfied. Oh, it had two very popular Japanese actors and all. But the time piece didn't make the usual eye-candy appealing. Ugh! I will say that both actors did a well-done job. Actually an awesome job....expected of them. The story just wasn't right for either one of them.

Ah well, two hours wasted. My bad.

Fujiwara Tatsuya


Tsumabuki Satoshi