I Will Buy You

Before he made his best known films (like those in The Human Condition trilogy, Harakiri, and Kwaidan), Masaki Kobayashi made a handful of fairy small-scale dramas. I'm not crazy about them (and I'm also not crazy about sports movies much of the time), but such films are still pretty interesting and well-made, and I Will Buy You is no exception.

It's a very downbeat look at the behind-the-scenes machinations that go in within the baseball industry in Japan, with the lives of people being bought, swapped, and bartered on, all in the name of a national pastime. The film is a little dull, but I think at its core, the subject and approach does contain some interest; it's definitely got things to say, I just wish I found it a tiny bit more engrossing.