Rent Takeshis' (2005)

Disappointing and overly complicated. - Takeshis' review by CP Customer

Takashis' revolves around two men, the real life Takeshi ’Beat’ Kitano who has become bored with his life as an actor and director, and a shy, quiet convenience store assistant and struggling actor who looks identical to Kitano. After a brief meeting outside a life where the lookalike Kitano asks the real Kitano for an autograph, the two go their separate ways with the lookalike Kitano dreaming about living life of the real Takeshi Kitano and the real Takeshi Kitano dreaming about living the life of his lookalike. Jumping between reality and fantasy the dreams of the two men often overlap and parallel each other throughout the film. I'm a big fan of Takeshi Kitano, as an actor he's charismatic and immensely watchable and as a director he's one of the best foreign directors around. Though personally, after ‘Getting Any’ I found Takeshis' to be his weakest film to date, while the idea behind the film is clever the film often becomes a little too surreal and doesn’t quite manage to pull everything together. If you’re a Kitano fan then this is something you’ll want to see, though if you’ve not experienced his work before this is probably the worst place to start and you’ll be far better off starting with ‘Kikujiro’ or ‘Hana-Bi’.