One of the worst movies I've ever seen

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

This is dark, dark, rain soaked yakuza stuff. This is the kind of movie that likes to take aerial shots of urban nightscapes, to steal glances out a drenched car window at the blurry shapes of neon shop signs and road traffic, to roll down in a bloody mess on the floor of cheap hotel rooms and basements. An odd assortment of sociopathic Tokyo misfits conspires to take on a yakuza underboss for 100mill, but the heist doesn't take place in an asphalt jungle, it takes place in an asphalt desert, and there's a pitiless sense of isolation about it, roads that lead nowhere travelled by characters who can't reach anywhere anymore, destinations are turned into dead ends and direction becomes purposeless. And it doesn't go well, as with most heist films, there's always that small insubstantial detail that couldn't be planned and no one could foresee because who knows why a man will steal a passport he knows will incriminate everyone involved, and the human factor is unfathomable and explosive and so interesting for that.Incredible violence is visited upon everyone in the aftermath of the botched job, loved ones are tortured and people are shot deadpan like it's something that needs to get out of the way quick, the value of human life is nil but the soul remains intact; in the end someone comes back to the place of the heist carrying a gun and his revenge has nothing to do with money. There's coldness with warmth in it like someone will build a small fire in the middle of a rainstorm and hope to keep himself warm throughout the night. Futility and the dogged pursuit against it, and more dead ends and burned destinations. There's so much violence in Gonin that people have called it nihilist and hopeless but it's not for me, because, dim as it may be, the embers of that small fire still burn at the break of dawn, even when there's no one around to keep it going or be warmed by it anymore.I dunno why Ishii chose to make his male bonding homosexual, love is love after all, and it works for Gonin for the same reasons an American remake would never allow it, because it breaks down what you can expect from this type of film, but hit-man Beat Takeshi takes up the butt his younger sidekick on the target's couch right after the hit and a bleeding man kisses his heist partner in the mouth moments before he dies and all this will make someone out there uncomfortable and I'm guessing that will be the same kind of person who won't blink an eye at all the horrible violence that goes on.Out of the blue the movie becomes grotesque like a horror movie. The bloodstained figure of a man dressed in a dress shows up in a doorway, and there's an amazing sequence involving a household full of dead bodies and a crazed man talking to them. The man then stops and shaves himself in a cracked mirror and Gonin is that cracked reflection of a face broken by violence and no future, the shaving merely the routine, the ritual, like everything else, because a man eats with his wife and child in a restaurant and there's no joy in it anymore.Most of all, I love Gonin because it's as bleak and shockingly twisted for the sake of it and sombre as something Takashi Miike would make a few years later but it's shot in the way of Michael Mann's urban noir.

Honestly, I have to disagree. You have all the right to your opinion and I'm not criticizing or arguing with you. I just think it's one of the most subtle, interesting Yakuza movies I've ever seen. Subtlety may throw some as inconsequential nothingness. I dunno, I think by and large Japanese cinema, even mainstream Japanese cinema, is incredibly subversive. On the surface this looks like a weepy gangster movie about five losers who steal then get killed. I think underneath it's about the underdog being crushed by the ruling powers, in this case...five losers who steal then get killed. I dunno, I love it. Gonin 2 is lame as hell though.

I watched Gonin about 3 times by now and still I have to say that it is a great movie even if evaluated under different perspectives. Each character is a profound mixture of different shapes. Out of a certain kind of despair every person in the movie develops its unique behaviour which is a result of their lifes they were living. Gonin includes many interesting themes such as homosexuality, childhood, fear and last but not least what life can make out of every person when it crushes upon you. Lately it appeared to me as if the modern hero has to be an introvert ruthless killer without emotion and basically I have to say that those tendencies are found in Gonin as well - Although it is rather an antihero who is presented in Gonin by the actor Takeshi Kitano in the role of the killer taken into service by the Yakuza-boss. The most remarkable scene as far as I'm concerned is the one where the story of the weird man, having lost his job, comes back home after they had stolen the money from the Yakuza. Gonin is a movie with great suspense and, if watched carefully, with profound and emotional content.

A night-club owner, an unemployed businessman, an ex-cop on drugs, a small-time pimp and a transvestite (well, sort of) find together to rob a yakuza-gang. Against expectation they can pull off the heist, but afterwards they are hunted down by two professonal hitmen (one of them played by Takeshi Kitano at his stoic best). Without giving too much away one can say that the end can compare to "Hamlet" in terms of (relative) body-count.The story is really simple and has been told many times before, but the great cinematography, the good performances and the intensity of the violence make it seem fresh and exciting. I recommend this film to anyone who likes dark, nihilistic gangster-movies. Definitely not for the squeamish.("Gonin 2" is not a sequel, but tells a similar story with women in the leading roles. Although also quite good it's not as great as the first one.)