BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Titreenp SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

DipitySkillful an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

Stephanie There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

pyrocitor For a titan of cinema who would build his oeuvre around unpacking thematic contradictions and dichotomies of beauty and filth, Drunken Angel has to be one of legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa's most on-point treatises. Being Kurosawa's first post-war film, Drunken Angel fully embodies the melancholy spirit of the movement of post-WWII 'rubble films,' such as Rossellini's Rome, Open City and Carol Reed's The Third Man, but stands out by being far more infused with the poetic, grandiose existentialism and cheeky humour that would continue to shape Kurosawa's later classics. In equal parts a tenacious character study and parable for strains of hopeless, self-destructive behaviour in post-War, American-occupied Japan, Drunken Angel remains a searing early effort by a master craftsman quickly and resonantly finding his feet in the industry. Situated somewhere between a film noir and a medical buddy-cop drama, Kurosawa's film revolves around a doctor (Takashi Shimura) and his Yakuza patient (Toshiro Mifune, in his breakout role) who respect and care about each other too innately to do anything but verbally abuse and occasionally try to murder one another. Shimura's doctor is our titular 'drunken angel,' obsessed with saving people at all costs, yet constantly, aggressively inebriated to help numb the pain of his healing feeling like an increasingly losing battle. With his office overlooking a fetid, disease-riddled swamp, the doctor is reduced to belligerently bellowing at children playing to avoid the tuberculosis-infested waters, only to have his efforts discounted as the ramblings of an old, crackpot addict. He finds vestiges of meaning within the prospect of saving Mifune's swaggering Yakuza hotshot, dying of tuberculosis, but too entrenched in stubborn denial to relinquish his hard-partying gangster lifestyle. Through the heated interactions between them, Kurosawa teases out the impossibility yet necessity of healthy coping mechanisms within such a hopeless world, but that, bleakness aside, human compassion provides an ever-present bastion of hope. His peppering the dialogue with fleeting but reliably present moments of sour humour only helps the drama sink in as all the more credibly human, warts, flaws, addictions and all. Concentrating on character study rather than plot lends the film an almost stage play feel, but the plot intensifies somewhat with the final act return of a rival Yakuza mobster, who exacerbates all subplots of conflict, none the least being Mifune's growing desperation for social performance. Here, Kurosawa returns to his soon-to-be customary interrogations of human nature, by showing both Mifune and Shimura's doctor genuinely struggling with identity beyond their respective functions - Shimura's only sense of value in life comes from his role as physician, just as Mifune appears genuinely agonized by the prospect of relinquishing the Yakuza, even to save his own life. These conflicts are lend poetic gravitas by Kurosawa's stark, whimsically mobile cinematography, panning over the derelict buildings and festering chemical swamp, accompanied by desolate, swooping wind sounds, like an apocalyptic wasteland. But, even amidst a climactic showdown as bloody as any noir, Kurosawa never relinquishes leitmotifs of hope, like the mysterious, recurring strumming of a tranquil guitar over the swamp at night, simultaneously zen and threatening. If this rotting, destitute place is hell, Kurosawa insinuates, there are always angels therein, even if they are far more bedraggled (and, yes, often drunken) than any biblical portraits would have it. Shimura and Mifune would grow to become Kurosawa's most recurring stock players, and their exceptional work here is a testament to their acute watchability. Shimura's omnipresent pout allows him to convey the deepest, most empathetic pathos, yet always with a veneer of goofiness, and his 'sad clown' image perfectly bottles the doctor's passion, muted underneath layers of impotent, inebriated hopelessness. Similarly, Mifune's ferociously physical charisma makes his casting as a Yakuza intimidatingly believable, only to have his creeping doubt and flirtations with a new life beyond his self-destruction feel all the more unexpectedly vulnerable. In one dialogue-free scene alone, Mifune exhibits more acting than many stars showcase throughout an entire picture: blind-drunk at a night club, he sways back and forth, a Cheshire cat smile plastered across his face, but his eyes betraying his haunted loneliness. Then, when prompted to get up and dance with an attractive woman, he - previously barely able to prop his eyes open - whirls her into a surprisingly suave, perfectly executed dance routine despite looking at the point of slumping into unconsciousness at the drop of a hat, his hollow grin never leaving his face. It's a fleeting but painfully poignant moment, and as telling of the indomitable star he would become as any of his more explosive outbursts. Simpler and smaller in scope than some of Kurosawa's more expansive later classics, but no less visceral in its intimacy, Drunken Angel remains one of the most powerful and necessary entries into Kurosawa's body of work. It's not a light watch - but, if you're looking for frivolity in Kurosawa, you're barking up the wrong auteur - but it's more than suitably elevated by the interplay between its magnetic leads, Kurosawa's life-saving bursts of irreverence and an achingly hopeful ending. Nearly 60 years after its release, Drunken Angel remains an abiding testament to Kurosawa's uncanny ability to blend philosophy, beautifully grim imagery, and moments of abject silliness into something fundamentally human. And just try getting that disturbingly serene guitar riff out of your head after the credits. Just try. -9/10

Gray_Balloon_Bob This is my third (proper) viewing of Kurosawa, and although each previous experience left enough of an impression on me to anticipate the next one, and although almost a year later images of The Hidden Fortress (1958) are still burned in my mind and playing like a permanent slideshow, only now something has really clicked with me. Like the best music albums that slowly unfurl their layers after repeated listening, my relationship with Kurosawa has now progressed beyond admiration to borderline love. Even Rashomon (1950) took a while to settle in my mind before I could fully comprehend exactly what it was doing and why I couldn't leave the thought of it alone. Kurosawa had such a masterful command of film that each and every moment feels alive, and not just kinetic but thoughtful. A scene here that I immediately recall is one in the dance hall which much of the action revolves around, in which the camera is tightly focused on a corridor, and we see our resident gangster Matsunaga (Toshiro Mifune) drunkenly stumble in, barely supported by two cronies, and then quickly pulled off frame. The camera waits for the rest of the flood of people to issue in, before pulling back along the corridor and stopping at a table of women, who talk of Matsunaga and his company, who are just off-screen. Just describing this scene does little much to illustrate its importance, but it significantly raises the drama and captures the chaos of the environment in a single interesting shot: our character has been warned not to drink and has been actively resisting the temptation, his being dragged off screen in pathetic stupor helps only adds to his increasing helplessness that we the audience share with him and the choice to suddenly stop on this group of women cleverly allows a piece of exposition to be delivered about a character in the form of relished gossip without artificially slowing the action down. Maybe what makes Kurosawa more readily accessible, on a superficial level at least, is how intertwined he seems to be with Western culture. Whether the film is borrowing elements from the West, or what you're seeing is the original prototype that was taken and remade in Westernized form, ala Seven Samurai, it's hard to escape the meeting of cultures in his work. Not that you'd want to. Here, the film takes place in a more immediate Post-WWII setting, and so the streets and its inhabitants are infused with a foreign presence; some signs are English, the gangsters dress and posture like Americans, and the malaise of recent war is still in the air, relayed to us through the cranky and cynical Doctor who really, it appears, just wants to help and hearten his fellow people. There sits a wide stagnant pool outside his office that Kurosawa's camera frequently returns to, and the Doctor at one point tries to warn off a group of children gathered around it, his aged, grumpy presence masking the fact, to the children at least, that he doesn't have to warn them of the typhoid they'll get for hanging around such places. This compassionate man is played impeccably by Takashi Shimura, who I've learned to be a Kurosawa regular. He is both cantankerous and quietly sensitive. He struggles with alcoholism but is entirely dedicated to his job. Shimura has this wonderful lower lip which works to great comic effect and can earn our sympathy easily; sometimes he looks so indignant at the happenings of the world, others he blusters and bumbles and drags it across the top of a glass loaded with alcohol. This Doctor is visited one night by an injured man, Toshiro Mifune, who it turns out is a gangster with a threatening case of TB, and an odd bond is solidified between them that comes not so much from friendship as it does just their yearning need to exist; the Doctor needs to help his patient and the patient knows, despite all his posturing, the he needs the Doctor. Mifune is like lightning here, striking at every turn and always carrying some threat of destruction. But that destruction isn't so much outward violence as it is him slowly killing himself. Much of the pathos in the film comes from seeing him ever so slowly and consistently deteriorate, until it seems like there is hardly anything left of him. Toward the end of the film, when Matsunaga realises he has been stripped of all power and is effectively waiting for his own grave to be filled, he has so little strength his body can barely take the realisation; his hanging limbs and ghoulish frozen face seem to call back to the Silent era of bold theatrical movement, and in fact in the pale desperation of his face I was reminded of Cesare from The Cabinet of Dr Cagliari. This film runs at little over 95 minutes and Kurosawa keeps the relatively simple story alive in every frame, and is filled with wonderful touches. In the first half of the film, a street musician regularly plays a mournful piece on his guitar at night, the same rhythm and the same place each time, and the world feels repeated and cyclical. When a recently released Gangster returns from prison, he asks for the guitar the musician has and plays his own piece; not just hearkening his own arrival to the world but announcing the film's shift into the second half and the darker place it is taking us and its characters. This includes a haunting fever dream of two Mifunes and final confrontation that is reckless and intense and pathetic and in its spontaneity feels proto-Godard (without the pretension). This is Kurosawa's eighth film but what he considered his first, and it is clear that he has taken away the experience from those seven previous features and distilled it into something entirely his own; a clear indication of all the masterpieces to come.

William Samuel Drunken Angel is not a movie driven by plot or action, it is above all a character study of a hard living Yakuza gangster and the doctor determined to save his life. It may not be exciting or humorous, and I wouldn't call it a masterpiece, but it works quite well as a relationship movie- albeit not the kind you're probably used to.The good doctor (the "drunken angel" of the title, played by Takashi Shimura) is an interesting character. For one thing, he drinks- a lot. At one point he sheepishly admits to a colleague that he drank the medicinal alcohol he was allotted. And his bedside manner leaves much to be desired. His manner is brusque, and he's not afraid to shout at his patients or call them idiots. But his ruff style belies the fact that he is deeply dedicated to his profession, and to those placed in his care.But he's never had to deal with a guy like Matsunaga (Toshiro Mifune). This guy is the patient from hell. Supremely self confident, not inclined to follow instructions, and more than willing to beat you up if he doesn't like what you have to tell him. And although he doesn't want to face it, he has a deadly case of TB. If he wants to live, he'll have to straighten out and give up drinking, smoking, and the girls. But when an old 'friend' gets out of jail, his position in the underworld is threatened, and reform may be too much to ask for.It's amazing that no matter how many times Matsunaga screws up, no matter how crass or violent he gets, the doctor never gives up on him. When he shows up knee walking drunk, the doc puts him up for the night. When he gets a late-night emergency call, he goes to care for him. The doctor complains bitterly, saying that he's had it and he refuses to see the patient anymore, but we know it's only bluster. For all his flaws, the doctor is far too dedicated to give in.Drunken Angel is also a message movie about the dangers of hard living and the lack of honor among thieves. As his illness worsens, Matsunaga discovers that his so called friends were only interested in his wealth and influence. His old friend Okada, sensing weakness, wants his territory. The big boss sees him only as a pawn whose condition can be exploited. Even his steady girlfriend wants nothing to do with a terminally sick man.And as severe as his illness was, Matsunaga could have lived if he had only followed the doctor's orders. But his friends and his surroundings were as deadly as the TB. The very way he lived his life was as sick as his lungs, his outlook and values as rotten as the bog that runs through the neighborhood. And yet deep down he was not a bad man. Kurosawa understood that showing an evil, repulsive man coming to a bad end would be no different from countless other morality plays. By giving us a character we can sympathize with, he has conveyed his message all the more powerfully.

Ilpo Hirvonen This movie has many levels as many Kurosawa's movies do. Many have said that this was not a typical Kurosawa film. Maybe because people haven't seen other films by Kurosawa than his Samurai-movies which have made him so famous. I didn't find this that extraordinary compared to other movies by Kurosawa, because Kurosawa's films are always extraordinary; compared to other filmmakers'.Akira Kurosawa usually dealt with taboos of his culture, values in life and with different kind of themes; often same kind of themes Shakespeare was infatuated with. This film dealt with friendship, environment, willpower, life. Big things, films by Kurosawa often have several layers and are open for interprepation.Even that the main message of the film is that you can get through your problems by willpower, and that's the most important thing when you face an issue. But I think Drunken Angel also tries to say that you should take good care of your environment. The environment of your body, the people and the whole world around you. Because there really are no bad people just bad environments that shape us into different molds.A very good early Kurosawa. Highly recommended for all interested in his work. I've seen quite many films by him and this certainly isn't in the bottom.