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Cure (1997)

Cure (1997)

GENRESCrime,Horror,Mystery,Thriller
LANGJapanese,Spanish
ACTOR
Masato HagiwaraKôji YakushoTsuyoshi UjikiAnna Nakagawa
DIRECTOR
Kiyoshi Kurosawa

SYNOPSICS

Cure (1997) is a Japanese,Spanish movie. Kiyoshi Kurosawa has directed this movie. Masato Hagiwara,Kôji Yakusho,Tsuyoshi Ujiki,Anna Nakagawa are the starring of this movie. It was released in 1997. Cure (1997) is considered one of the best Crime,Horror,Mystery,Thriller movie in India and around the world.

A wave of gruesome murders is sweeping Tokyo. The only connection is a bloody X carved into the neck of each of the victims. In each case, the murderer is found near the victim and remembers nothing of the crime. Detective Takabe and psychologist Sakuma are called in to figure out the connection, but their investigation goes nowhere. An odd young man is arrested near the scene of the latest murder, who has a strange effect on everyone who comes into contact with him. Detective Takabe starts a series of interrogations to determine the man's connection with the killings.

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Cure (1997) Reviews

  • Reading these comments is as interesting as watching the film

    BusterB2003-02-03

    One of the joys of seeing "foreign" films is catching a glimpse into other cultures. What do other people consider funny? Ordinary? Terrifying? "Cure" puts a Japanese spin on an idea that several American directors have touched on: that evil is something that can afflict perfectly ordinary people. David Lynch's "Twin Peaks" television series explored a similar idea to Kurosawa's: ordinary people afflicted with evil, rather than evil people, as such. The difference between Lynch and Kurosawa is that Lynch saw evil as some sort of independent force, whereas Kurosawa sees evil more as an idea. "Cure" presents us with a world in which words and ideas are a kind of virus that passes from person to person, leaving destruction in its wake. A carrier who doesn't fall ill himself, but who infects others with murderous instincts. For this reason, some of the comments here surprised me. Frequent complaints about how elliptical the film is, and how the characters need to be better defined. In particular, several complaints that the film never explained who the drifter was or where he came from. Surprising, because that, to me, was the point: he was nobody special. He didn't come from anywhere special. Viewers brought up on a diet of American cinema will find "Cure" frustrating: American thrillers always explain who the killer is, why he kills, and, most importantly, why he is different from you and me. This last point is to comfort the audience, to let them know that they could never be like the killer, that they are outside the drama, watching. Kurosawa presses the opposite point: this could be you; there is nothing special about these men. You should not be convinced that you are different from them. I will admit that if you dislike slowly-paced cinema, a la Tarkovsky, or if you don't buy the hypnotism "mumbo-jumbo" on which the film is based, then you will probably find "Cure" tiresome. I enjoy Tarkovsky, and I found that it wasn't a lot of work to suspend disbelief on the point of hypnotism. Finally, this film is an intellectual thriller; it's more frightening for its implications than for what actually goes on. The point is not to scare you and then wrap it all up neatly at the end (like most American thrillers), but instead to show you a possible world and then scare you after you leave the cinema with thoughts of what might follow. Check out the interview at http://www.reel.com/reel.asp?node=features/interviews/kurosawa as well.

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  • Remarkable Craft

    christian942002-01-15

    This movie has a simple premise and a simple story that is nevertheless explored in an incredibly delicate and talented way. Kiyoshi Kurosawa is an extremely talented individual and perhaps the only writer/director who is able to simultaneously scare and mentally challenge me at the same time (note that very few are capable of doing one or the other). Although the writing is very good (story and dialogue), Kurosawa's real strength is his ability to represent visually the progressive denouement of his story. He rather subtly show you and let your imagination and intellect figure it out for you than to spell out bluntly what the straightforward storyline should be. It does not, however, get to the point of chaotic untidiness or pointlessness, for he is able to guide you slowly along the way (I would then say that he is slightly easier to follow than David Lynch is, but then again who is not). He uses here a strikingly effective technique where he shows you a room from one angle and later lets you discover that room more and more as the movie advances. His camera shots are always well planned and he is thus able to draw you in the movie bit by bit-quite an eerie sensation. The acting is generally good and believable. The camera-work is a stand out. There are many scenes where you will be able to appreciate this superior artistic and technical quality. The music is good and tenseful, but it is sparse and what is used instead is a contrast of minimalist and grossly amplified everyday sounds that vibrate through the movie. When there is no sound, you often find yourself holding your breath. This is not used strictly as a ploy, but rather creates a mood and further pulls you in the general atmosphere of the movie. Most of all, again, the directing is top notch. The pace which is slow enough for you to have the time to both think and be afraid is not slow enough that it gets boring, although you should not expect a North American expeditious run through the film. Everything is there, but it comes to you in slow, meticulously chosen dosage. Only, at the end can you truly see the masterpiece that has been drawn stroke by stroke in front of you. One of the reason this movie actually works is that it is designed to play with your mind and trigger fear and reaction based not only on emotion, but on reason. People are dying, but everything is calm, rational. The tone and story are pretty much realistic and, at the end of the experience, you may feel beyond your volitional control that you are actually convinced of the "strange" things in the movie. Hopefully this feeling will subside...

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  • Possibly the spookiest movie I have ever seen.

    inframan2003-03-20

    The only time I can recall being as spooked by a film was when my parents took me to see "Hangover Square" - a gothic Jack the Ripper thriller - when I was 8 years old. I guess they couldn't find a baby-sitter. That took me about a year to get over, a low-key, all-too-realistic chiller about the banality of insanity. "Cure" is such a perfect depiction of madness that just about every shot could be framed & hung in a gallery. You can't analyze this one, it doesn't follow a cartesian line of logic; nor does it blast you with halloweenish surprises in the style of Elm Street & its knock-offs. This has far deeper & subtler impact. I found as I relaxed into this film that images of recurring dreams & nightmares I've had since childhood arose & blended into what I was watching. Can't get much creepier than that. That said, the images & emotions that this film evokes are on a very high level of poetic art. One of the most impressive elements of "Cure" is the director's ability to convey the magnetic manipulative appeal of Mamiya - surely one of the scariest things in real life & very difficult to convincingly convey on screen.

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  • A modern masterpiece

    LGwriter492002-02-04

    The serial killer movie has by now been done to death (so to speak), so it's especially rewarding to see this assured film that takes a truly ingenious approach. Kurosawa's protagonist is a seemingly dazed young man who, in spite of his aimless demeanor, is a master hypnotist. To reveal any more of what happens would be to give a bit too much away. The subtlety and fluidity of this film is remarkable. The main character can be charming and simultaneously irritating when he speaks. He turns his speaking partner's question back on the speaker; he answers with vague phrases that nevertheless, over the course of the film, gradually bring out the complexity of his psyche. Pitting him against a cop whose wife seems to suffer from something like the hypnotist's 'brand' of mental wanderings underlines the thematic context of the film: what we know is almost certainly only what we think we know. And what we think we know is almost certainly based on someone else's 'knowledge', derived the same as ours. That knowledge is a collective phenomenon, a shared and critical feature of the 'hive' is not a novel concept in film. But its presentation here is bold and original. To link that idea with a person who destroys life is a master stroke; it says that what we know vanishes in a suddenly extinguished flame, or a tiny stream of water that appears, runs, and then is seen no more. This is a film that should definitely be added to the great films of the 90s. Since it was not released in the U.S. until 2001, I vote for it being one of the great films of that year here.

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  • An enigmatic hypnotic and disturbing meditation on self control and the fear of losing it

    Gizmoitus2002-08-25

    It's not easy to give yourself over to this film, for like the unwilling victims' it portrays, it rather slowly and methodically casts its spell, whisking you farther and farther away from the comfortable rhythm and conventions of the crime thriller it appears to be on the surface. Kyua's austere landscapes are in fitful turns picture postcard beautiful, mundane and mysterious. Much of the story unfolds in master shots, keeping you at a distance from the characters and affording the illusion of a comfortable intellectual detachment which it meticulously strips away scene by scene. The plot is deceptively simple; a weary Japanese Homicide detective is investigating a series of grotesque murders. Each murder seems to have the same ritualistic pattern, yet in each case the culprit turns out to be an ordinary individual, dazed and unable to offer any motive for their horrific crime. Nothing seems to connect the murderers to each other, until the Detective picks up the trail of an amnesia afflicted drifter who seems unable to answer even the simplest questions about himself, yet displays a disconcerting ability to reflect any line of questioning about his own identity back upon the questioner. Time and again he returns to a question at the core of the mystery: "Who are you?" It seems more and more, as the drifter is passed from detective, to guard, to clinician to pyschiatrist, that this question is far more dangerous than anyone might have guessed. Kyua is a model of subtlety and restraint. Although there's a significant amount of implied violence and several shocking scenes of murder, these aren't gratuitous. Kyua's particular genius is it's ability to transform it's urban Japanese landscapes and even the most common objects from familiar to suspect and eventually sinister: a length of piping, a flashing traffic sign, a blast furnace, the sound of ocean surf at night, a flickering lighter, a dark apartment lined with academic tomes, a puddle of spilled water, the letter X smeared on a wall, a deserted rundown building. There are few filmmakers with the audacity and imagination to venture into the places Kyua wants to take you. Fincher, Lynch and Cronenberg come to mind as those who time and time again have shown their willingness, and perhaps compulsion to return to the unsettling territory of perception, identity, and the boundary between normalcy and psychosis. If the director's first name were only David (it's not, his name is Kiyoshi Kurosawa) we'd have the makings of a good conspiracy theory here. The film was released in 1997 but only recently has made it's way to western shores, and US distribution by Cowboy Pictures, and has wound its way inevitably to cable networks like Sundance. It's cast includes Koji Yakusho as the detective Takabe. Fans of Japanese cinema will recognize this fine actor from his award winning roles in "Shall we Dance" and "The eel". Kyua isn't the type of visceral immediate drama that the average suspense film provides. If you can put aside your preconceived notions and allow it to unfold in it's own time, I suspect you will find the questions it asks and secrets it reveals to be all the more disquieting, problematic and in the end profound. Many critics have lined up to call this film a masterpiece, and pegged Kurosawa as one of a number of japanese directors worth watching.

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