Brother

[MichaelB]

Confirmed as a Blu-ray release on 21 April 2025.

Takeshi 'Beat' Kitano directs and stars in this brutal crime thriller about a Japanese yakuza forced to flee to Los Angeles after the death of his boss.

In the wake of a failed gang war, Yamamoto ‘Aniki’ (Kitano) arrives in Los Angeles with nothing but a new name and a bag of cash. Re-uniting with his younger brother, he uses his extensive experience as a hardened gangster, to grow a small-time drug operation into an far-reaching criminal brotherhood, attracting the attention of rival gangs with bloodthirsty consequences.

• Presented in High Definition
• The Green Flash (1988, 23 mins): Adam Davis’ short film about an encounter between a runaway and a gangster featuring a young Omar Epps in his first screen role
• Other extras tbc
• **FIRST PRESSING ONLY** Illustrated booklet featuring new writing on the film

[beamish14]

Hugely underrated movie. The first encounter between Kitano and Epps that is shown almost exclusively in close-ups of their faces is hysterical.

[Peacock]

Looking forward to revisiting this strange (aren’t they all?) movie. A bit of an outlier in the Kitano canon.

Was this the last of his films needing a Blu? His later stuff has expensive English subbed Japanese releases.

[swo17]

Imprint had already released Brother. Everything he made up through 2003's Zatoichi is out from either Imprint, BFI, or Third Window

[Peacock]

Ah I somehow forgot about that, thanks. So the only one not available anywhere in HD are his short films?

[swo17]

I'm not really familiar with him having made any shorts besides his contribution to Chacun son cinéma

[rapta]

Been asking BFI or Indicator to get this for years (both labels had Film4 deals at different times), so very happy one of them finally did! Makes sense as BFI released their Kitano set a few years back, and are actively more invested in releasing Japanese cinema. Goes without saying, immediately pre-ordered!

[Orlac]

Several of the losers on a certain other forum have got really triggered by the content warning at the start of the movie on this disc...

[tenia]

Haven't all BFI discs been starting for a few years with a disclaimer anyway ?

As usual, these people should ask to get trigger warning about the presence of trigger warnings. I’m also quite amazed that they equate indicating a movie contains depictions of racism and homophobia and that the label disapprove of such behaviors with the movie actively being so (because showing such behaviors is different from condoning them) and that the label stating it’s bad to behave this way means they’re “disapprove of the movie” altogether (which then makes one wonder why they’d release it on BD). The kind of replies that makes me both frustrated and happy being banned from there.

I couldn’t care less about those. Don’t like these disclaimers ? They’re 20 seconds, shorter than some labels’ intros. Drink a glass of water meanwhile, or check what time it is and when the movie will be over, close your shutters or check your email. Anyone of those will do.

[sabbath]

Unfortuantely, Cine Outsider found the picture problematic:

The problem, at least for this viewer, is how the picture brightness and contrast have been graded, especially when compared to the close to spot-on grade on the DVD. There's no getting around it, the image here is overly dark, with the result that it sucks picture detail into the often solidly black shadows, and even partially obscures the faces of characters in some scenes. While some might argue that this is intentional, being a visual representation of the film's noir sensibilities, I'm not buying it. We screened this film at the cinema-based film society I used to co-run, and the transfer on the previous DVD was as close as dammit to how the film looked on the big screen. Even without that comparison, however, the grading of the transfer on this Blu-ray just feels off, as the film is clearly not lit to be graded as darkly as it is on this disc.

[domino harvey]

Haven't all BFI discs been starting for a few years with a disclaimer anyway ?

As usual, these people should ask to get trigger warning about the presence of trigger warnings. I’m also quite amazed that they equate indicating a movie contains depictions of racism and homophobia and that the label disapprove of such behaviors with the movie actively being so (because showing such behaviors is different from condoning them) and that the label stating it’s bad to behave this way means they’re “disapprove of the movie” altogether (which then makes one wonder why they’d release it on BD). The kind of replies that makes me both frustrated and happy being banned from there.

I couldn’t care less about those. Don’t like these disclaimers ? They’re 20 seconds, shorter than some labels’ intros. Drink a glass of water meanwhile, or check what time it is and when the movie will be over, close your shutters or check your email. Anyone of those will do.

I disagree. I don’t mind these kind of parental warnings for materials that kids might reasonably watch, but a film for adults should not contain mandatory warnings about allegedly offensive content. It’s also clearly not intended to be helpful but rather serves as a CYA, since those who’d benefit from receiving a content warning likely would prefer this information to be available before purchasing. Still, if a distributor wishes to include this information in their package, it could easily be included in less obtrusive ways.

[tenia]

If CYA means Cover Your Ass, I do agree with you as I believe that's their actual purpose. I just couldn't care less about them because I'm used to being welcomed by legal mentions text panels I don't care about, and find them absolutely inocuous. Again, they're 20 seconds long, just don't read them if you can't bear them ? It took me 10 times that to remove the glue of my Josey Wales steelbook's J-card.
It could be done in a better way, I agree, but I do think that even as they are at the moment, they remain a much smaller issue than what these posts are turning them into.

[Orlac]

I wonder if BFI uses the warnings as they are in part publicly funded?