Oct 12, 2023 (japansubculture.com) - Bad Lands is the latest film release from Masato Harada who at this point, is Japan's most exciting filmmaker. Forget the foreign critics' darling Ryusuke Hamaguchi of Drive My Car fame - Harada is sexier, racier and much more unscrupulous.
He has no qualms about lifting (or if you prefer, 'paying homage to') Hamaguchi’s elitist plot quirks that have endeared that director to discerning Western audiences. In Drive My Car it was Chekov's Uncle Vanya. In the case of Bad Lands, Harada refers to Dostoevsky and Beckett. These may go over the heads of Japanese viewers but will surely get mentioned in foreign review sites.
But Harada doesn't want to go the route of international film circuit triumphs while getting almost no love at home. This is why he always anchors most of his pop culture references, visual aesthetics and comedy factors firmly in Japan. In interviews, Harada says his spiritual mentors are Akira Kurosawa and Howard Hawkes, two film giants who made movies that broke box office and pleased critics.
Harada's last five films have formed a league of their own. Bad Lands feels like the grand finale, a piece de resistance that caps off a winning streak.
If there's a snag to any of this, it's that Bad Lands's main cast has two prominent performers from Johnny & Associates: Ryosuke Yamada and Junichi Okada. Japanese media is agonized over how to react to the alleged sex abuse inflicted on underage idols by the late Johnny Kitagawa, going back several decades. Right now, major sponsors are backing out of endorsement contracts or, as in the case of Nestle Japan, issuing statements that they never have and never will, use a Johnny member in any of their ads. ...continue reading
