FILM REVIEW - EUREKA!
This Japanese film rolls in at three and a half hours, and claims to be inspired by the John Wayne Classic The Searchers, but it proves to be 3 h 30 minutes of mind and bum numbing tedium. The story concerns the three survivors of a hijacked bus siege, the driver and two mute children. The actual siege sequence actually starts the film off well, but as it sinks into a study of post tragedy trauma the film loses all sense of proportion. The driver gives up his new job as a construction worker and moves in on the now orphaned kids two years after the tragedy. If people make a journey, we see the whole thing, down to the last stop at the traffic lights. It’s like watching the Tokyo road A to Z being filmed. I feel as though if I went there I could find may round town from remembering this film.
The central characters are joined by the children's cousin, and eventually the driver buys a bus just like his old one and they go off on a voyage of self discovery,,,, all glum and miserable, no one sings Summer Holiday On This trip. However, one of them is a serial killer, (we never see the killings, just glimpses of the police investigating various riverside crime scenes) having given in to the urge to kill from having nearly being killed himself, - no surprises that it proves to be the mute boy who, like his sister isn’t so mute at all. The driver catches him and turns him in to the police, kicks out the greedy cousin and stops the girl from killing herself, as the film bursts into colour and goes off...... leaving you thinking, ‘is that it?" 90 minutes of this might have had something to say. 210 minutes is a travelogue.
Arthur Chappell
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