In the tradition of Central Station comes Kikujiro the highly acclaimed new film from Takeshi ?Beat?Kitano, the award winning director of Fireworks (Hana-Bi) and Sonatine. Lonely nine- year-old Masao leaves Tokyo in search of his mother, a woman he?s never met. He?s accompanied on his journey across the Japanese countryside by surly, middle-aged petty crook Kikujiro (Kitano), who is none too happy being the chaperone. When Kikujiro gambles away all of Masao?s travel money, the two must rely o their wits and the kindness of colorful strangers. Along the way, as the two share a series of wild and unpredictable adventures, they end up at a destination that neither of them could have imagined.


Kikujiro is a change of pace for Takeshi Kitano, the Japanese director-star whose Sonatine and Hana-Bi (Fireworks) perfected his brand of deadpan Yakuza movie. In this one, "Beat" Takeshi (his acting handle) plays opposite a nine-year-old boy in a picaresque comedy-drama. It must be firmly said that Kikujiro does not represent his best work (nor did Kids Return, another Kitano film about childhood). It does, however, apply Kitano's black-comic style to a different setting, and individual scenes sparkle with unexpected jokes, twists, and occasional cruelties.


To play opposite him, the director has cast a little boy very nearly as deadpan as himself, Yusuke Sekiguchi. He plays Masao, who lives with his grandmother in Tokyo, a lonely child who wonders why his mother has abandoned him. Masao determines to visit Mom in another part of Japan, and Beat Takeshi is the crusty man chosen to chaperone him on this journey. The first day out, the man blows their travel money on bets at the race track, which means they have to hitch and hustle the rest of the way.

So the movie becomes a series of encounters along the road: they run into a child molester, a pair of friendly bikers, a wandering poet with a hippie van. As a director, Kitano understands that the emotional moments in the story will gain power by being played in a flat, poker-faced style. He's right -- for instance, his character's brief look at his own mother is devastating, thanks to the filmmaker's discreet staging of the event. Having said that, I'm not sure how to explain Kitano's fondness for the insistent music of Jo Hisaishi, which overtakes the film with some regularity.


Like some of Kitano's previous films, Kikujiro finds a paradise by the sea, a curious idyll within the clamor of the rest of the world. This comes toward the end, as the two travelers are joined by the bikers and the poet as they lay up for a few days of camping, nearly nude variations on Red Light Green Light, and amateur theatricals. This appears to be Kitano's idea of bliss (and reminiscent of a similar layover by the gangsters in Sonatine), with no responsibilities, no expectations, just a childlike sense of play.

The difference is, it's more interesting and more complex to watch adults playing these games than it is a little kid, at least in these circumstances. Still, Kikujiro contains its share of amoral jokes or explosions of violence, little surprises along the way. One wonders how much Takeshi Kitano identifies with the character he plays in the film, a fellow given to taunting and greed and temper. He has said the man is based on his father, which lends another level of family dynamics to the movie's story.