In a beautiful, exotic, strange culture, two New York cops have to find their way to recover their dignity.
After arresting a Yakuza (Japanese Mafia) hitman, two NYPD detectives (Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia, the first accused of being a dirty cop) have to take their prisoner to Tokyo. What will be their surprise when, after delivering their prisoner to a group of Japanese policemen, they suddenly find out that these were not policemen, but actually Yakuza men releasing their partner!
Knowing nothing of Japanese, they will now have to cope with cultural differences and find a partnership with Japanese policeman Masahiro Matsumoto (Ken Takakura) to solve the implications of this cultural mistake and to learn the value of honor.
The shock between different cultures is the background scenario of this good production directed by Ridley Scott, who actually saves the script. Differences between American and Japanese way of life are here put over the table, so people can take a look at the best (and worst) of both worlds at a glimpse. From this viewpoint, one can reflect over current issues which are not yet behind: the influence of American culture on Japanese post-World War II economy is still a subject for discussion when talking about cultural opposition between East and West.
Still, everything represented by a different culture carries a tendency, in an anthropological point of view, to be subject of misunderstanding, leading to problems related to racism. That is usually called ethnocentrism, and treated by Analytical Psychology as a cultural limitation which we have as individuals when related to the mechanism of projection, where one has a basic rule: the other is always the one who has defects, not the one who observes. This way, we are forced to search ourselves on our cultures and our souls on our inner realities, to find out who we really are. We don’t have to eliminate what is different, but learn how to live with it.
Being in a different culture is sometimes the way to immerse in a different life experience: one can find if one is truly who he/she always thought that he/she were. This is what will happen to Japanese and American when they have to work together. A good action movie with some good elements for psychological reflection.
Where did Kate Capshaw went after this movie? I saw her working together with Harrison Ford in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," but it seems that she disappeared after that. Ken Takakura appears as the great Japanese actor that he actually is.
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