License to Live

Young man Yutaka emerges unexpectedly from a long coma. The coma resulted from a no-blame accident in which his father's friend Fujimori, played by Koji Yakusho, had nonetheless played a part. Fujimori, to sooth his own conscience, takes the boy in. Various people from the past come and go. Most of the action takes place in Fujimori's decrepit... Anyway…I had to watch this on a video dub. The film's neither good nor bad. But I can't bring myself to go back to the dub and check details. Maybe it was a fishery. A lot of cleaning a wide shadow indoor pool. If you're a fan of Kiyoshi Kurosawa, License to Live's fascinatingly unlike both the Tarkovsky-like not-quite-horror films most of us know and the Godard-like yakuza stuff (I've only managed to see two, I think Eyes of the Spider and Serpent's Path) that preceded. If you're a fan of Koji Yakusho (despite IMDb's listing his part is as big as, if not bigger than, the young man's), this very slightly written role foreshadows his intricate turn in Shinji Aoyama's Eureka.