Rating: 
Summary: a powerful movie that took a few tries
Review: It's hard for me not to think of movies like Boiling Point and Violent Cop while watching this. Takeshi (Beat) Kitano made quite a switch from Takeshi's Castle to the heavy drama of these movies, but perhaps it was too heavy at first. Violent Cop is, in the end, an unrealized movie that doesn't really manage to control its range of emotional tension, violence and humanity. Boiling Point does better, but perhaps is a little too bleak (this from a guy who loves violent movies). In Fireworks, though, Kitano gets it all right. The violence is stark, Kitano is a bubbling, quiet and stoic while really letting you know what's on his mind, and this film, believe it or not, is bursting with hope--though it's never really acknowledged by the characters themselves.
Rating: 
Summary: Masterpiece ruined by atrocious transfer
Review: Most of the other viewer reviews say exactly what I would like to say about this film - that it is uncompromising in it's beauty. Alternately brooding, slow, but with occasional outbursts of violence and motion, the images in this film have stayed with me for a very long time. Very Minor Spoiler Warning: My only objection to this DVD is in the subtitles. I studied a little Japanese in high school, just basics, but the last line of the film is "gomen nasai," which means "sorry," not "Thank you for everything," as the subtitles show. Why did the translator feel it necessary to put something other than what the character had said? That little, "I'm sorry," was one of the most poignant statements of the entire film. I really hope that Criterion will pick this film up - otherwise, I hope that in the future, New Yorker will stop trying to rewrite the world's masterpieces as they come into America. I think that we're smart enough to take the real.
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