brilliant actors, brilliant editing

A Brilliant Conflict

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Terribly misleading film. From the cover art to the synopsis to the fact that it's a sequel to The Red Spectacles, it's easy to assume that this would be another insane sci-fi weird-out. But no, this film is slow, meticulous, delicate and at times insanely beautiful. How silly I felt when I thought I was watching the wrong movie and had to look up screenshots and other reviews to see if I was or not. It really recalls Takeshi Kitano, predating his work with Sonatine and Hana-Bi. Static shots, emphasis on backgrounds, light on dialogue. Quite a gap in style from its Seijun Suzuki-esque predecessor. The characters mainly have fun on holiday and fall in love to incredible, emotive music. There's nothing too challenging or esoteric, though it's not necessarily exciting or bent on narrative. Just a gorgeous, emotionally resonant piece of work.

This movie is 99% dumb boring nonsense shots of idiots wandering around Japan with no character development, 1% cool suit of armor guy murdering mimes with a MG42.How come alternate history fascist Japan looks exactly like regular Japan.How come Japanese people eating prawns is supposed to be considered character development.How come heavy-handed metaphors about stray dogs are supposed to be considered profound.Why isn't the whole movie like that 1%. Why. Riddle me that, Japan.Peace.

If I had to describe this movie in one word I'd say: boring. STRAY DOGS develops some plot at the beginning and shows some action at the end. But in-between happens almost absolutely nothing. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those people who need lots of action, blood and explosions to enjoy a movie. In fact I also like movies that make you think. But I somehow must have missed the message of this movie, because I didn't find anything to think about. I don't find it very inspiring to watch the camera go down some back alleys for several minutes, with absolutely no dialogue and nothing else happening at all.I also didn't find it visually very impressive. Apart from a hand full of interesting images it's photographed in a very plain way, with very ordinary sceneries. The camera-work is sometimes very shaky, it almost made me sick.Compared with Oshii's other works, namely RED SPECTACLES and AVALON, STRAY DOGS is even more quiet, almost dreamy. But all other movies by Oshii which I have seen so far are also clearly superior to STRAY DOGS.

STRAY DOG is a sequel/companion piece to Oshii's 1987 film RED SPECTACLES. In RED SPECTACLES we learned how the elite police force of the Panzer Corps. was disbanded and how a group of officers refused to give up their weapons. One of them fled the country and returned years later. RED SPECTACLES was about what he experiences after his return. STRAY DOG is about his adventures abroad. Thus this later film adds information to the story of the earlier film, some of which actually makes the convoluted weirdness of RED SPECTACLES seem a little less impenetrable. STRAY DOG has a unique atmosphere and feels very different from Oshii's typical melancholy and brooding efforts. For most of its running time the film is upbeat and beautiful. It is set in Taipeh and makes great use of the scenery there. And once again this would only be a fraction of the film that it is without the ingenious score by longtime Oshii-collaborator Kenji Kawai.