The Accidental Kidnapper (Yukai Rhapsody), actor/director Sakaki Hideo’s new film that takes its inspiration from A Perfect World (1993) and other heart-warming films like it, but with a comic spin.
This may sound like a recipe for another cutesy, teary Japanese melodrama. It is nothing of the kind. Instead Sakaki walks the comedy/drama line with smarts and finesse. The laughs and tears are all of a piece, with clever twists on formula plots.
Date Hideyoshi (Takahashi Katsunori), an ex-con, mulls over his life - no job, no wife, no family, no money - and decides to end it all amid the cherry blossoms. But after his half-hearted attempts at suicide end in failure he notices that a kid (Hayashi Roi) has crept into his car.
Densuke is six years old and has run away from home, he tells Date, and has no intention of going back.
This gives Date an idea - he will fake a kidnapping and extract a big wad of cash from the kid’s obviously loaded (from the looks of their house) parents. He borrows the kid’s cell phone and, telling him he’ll help him with his great escape, makes the fatal call.
Soon black-suited men are swarming through Densuke’s house, setting up electronic gear for locating and tracking the kidnapper. Their boss is Densuke’s glowering dad (Aikawa Sho) and the men are, not cops, but gangsters. Date has effectively signed his own death warrant.
He doesn’t know it yet though. Relying on advice about the kidnapping game remembered from an old con (Sasano Takashi), he gets his hands on the ransom. There’s just one problem: Densuke is enjoying his little adventure so much he doesn’t want it to end. In fact, he and Date have been buddies. But business is business - or is it?
There is plenty of action, comic and otherwise, mostly supplied by the pursuing gangsters, but also by a street-wise cop (Funakoshi Eiichiro) and his excitable junior partner (Yamamoto Koji) who wonder what the gang is in a lather about.
The story’s core, though, is the relationship between Date and Densuke. The boy is about what you would expect - brash, extroverted and blithely fearless. But newcomer Hayashi Roi can act circles around most adult so-called professionals with none of the annoying preciousness of the usual acting prodigy.
As the ex-con Date, Takahashi has the beaten, lonely air of a man who has spent his best years behind bars, but his comic reactions as straight man to his pint-sized co-star are spot on.
Their best scenes together feel spontaneous and unscripted - and are more than the sum of their gags. Desuke, who has led a sheltered, fearful life in his scary father’s shadow, learns from his rough-edged, but good-natured kidnapper about manhood - and freedom. Date regrets that he has missed out on fatherhood - and can now taste its joys only fleetingly.
The feelings these two have for each other emerge naturally from quarrels, escapades - and quiet moments chomping on convenience store food as they look at the stars.
Sakaki almost didn’t get this film released. One of his supporting actors, Oshio Manabu, was arrested on drug charges last August, stirring up a huge scandal and indefinitely delaying the release of the film. Sakaki reshot Oshio’s scenes, playing his computer-whiz-gangster character himself - and The Accidental Kidnapper (Yukai Rhapsody) finally opened in Japan on April 3th. Rhapsodic news indeed.
Mark Schilling