After walking into the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year with his utterly awful thriller/police procedural “Shield Of Straw” (our review), it was a reminder that for all of the Japanese auteur’s frenetic, groundbreaking films, he has just as many that are forgettable stinkers. The hit to miss ratio for the filmmaker tends to be pretty balanced, and while we’ll have to see just where “Mogura no Uta” ends up, there’s no denying it hints at the energy and verve of some of his better movies.
Based on the manga by Noboru Takahashi, the premise is right up his alley, with Toma Ikuta, Shinichi Tsutsumi, Mitsuru Fukikoshi, Ren Osugi, Takayuki Yamada, Takashi Okamura, Yusuke Kamiji and Riisa Naka starring in the “The Departed“/”Infernal Affairs“-esque plot about a cop infiltrating a criminal organization from the inside. As these teaser bears out, stuff will apparently get pretty wild and colorful, and it’s for certain that there’s more going on in this thirty seconds than all of ‘Shield.’
“Mogura no Uta” opens in Japan on February 15, 2014 but no word yet on how/if/when it will land stateside. [Nippon Cinema]