Kikujiro

"Quit playing gangster!" squawks the wife of the hen-pecked title character, a former Yakuza played by the film's writer, director and editor, Takeshi Kitano. And, for the most part, he has: Kitano, the maverick Japanese director behind such innovative, ultraviolent gangster fare as HANA-BI (FIREWORKS) and SONATINE, puts down the guns and delivers a mawkish version of CENTRAL STATION with none of that film's gentle grace. Lonely Tokyo schoolboy Masao (Yusuke Sekiguchi) decides, once school lets out for the summer, to seek out the mother who left him to be raised by his grandmother. On his way out of town, Masao runs into Kikujiro and his wife (Kayoko Kishimoto). Th...