Blood and Bones (2004)
"Chi to hone" (original title)

In 1923, the Korean teenager Kim Shun-Pei moves from Cheju Island, in South Korea, to Osaka, in Japan. Along the years, he becomes a cruel, greedy and violent man and builds a factory of ... See full summary »

Director:

Yôichi Sai

Writers:

Sogil Yan (novel), Yôichi Sai (screenplay),

Stars:

Takeshi Kitano, Hirofumi Arai, Tomoko Tabata

18 wins & 8 nominations.

Cast

Credited cast:
Takeshi Kitano	...	Joon-pyong Kim
Hirofumi Arai	...	Masao Kim
Tomoko Tabata	...	Hanako Kim
Jô Odagiri	...	Takeshi Park
Kyôka Suzuki	...	Yong-hee Lee
Yutaka Matsushige	...	Nobuyoshi Ko
Mari Hamada	...	Sadako Toritani
Yûko Nakamura	...	Kiyoko Yamanashi
Kazuki Kitamura	...	Yoshio Motoyama
Shûji Kashiwabara	...	San-myung Jang
Susumu Terajima	...	Hee-bom Park
Atsushi Itô	...	Yong-il / Young Joon-pyong
Miako Tadano	...	Chun-mi Kim
Mami Nakamura	...	Sanae Otani
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Jae Baxley	...	Fight Spectator

Storyline

In 1923, the Korean teenager Kim Shun-Pei moves from Cheju Island, in South Korea, to Osaka, in Japan. Along the years, he becomes a cruel, greedy and violent man and builds a factory of kamaboko, processed seafood products, in his poor Korean-Japanese community exploiting his employees. He makes fortune, abuses and destroys the lives of his wife and family, having many mistresses and children and showing no respect to anybody. Later he closes the factory, lending the money with high interests and becoming a loan shark. His hatred behavior remains until his last breath, alone in North Korea.

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Plot Keywords:

multiple time frames | 1980s | social commentary | violence | 1950s | 

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Genres:

Drama

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Details

Official Sites:

Lighthouse Pictures [Singapore] (English)

Country:

Japan

Language:

Korean Japanese

Release Date:

6 November 2004 (Japan)

Also Known As:

Blood and Bones

Box Office

Opening Weekend:

$294,978 (Japan) (5 November 2004)

Gross:

$1,301,595 (Japan) (19 November 2004)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Artist Film, Asahi Hoso, Be-Wild

Technical Specs

Runtime:

140 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The title comes from a Korean song: "I got the bone from my father, and the flesh from my mother...".

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Connections

Referenced in Glory to the Filmmaker! (2007)

User Reviews

A violent man wreaks havoc with family and neighbors in Osaka's post-war Korean-Japanese community

This movie represents the first leading role Beat Takeshi has taken in more than a decade in a movie he didn't direct. The advance reviews of his performance were enthusiastic, and his powerful depiction of the violent and controlling Kim Shunpei more than lives up to the notices. Still, the film itself is a flawed creation; unable to pack all of the critical backstory of the original best-selling book even into a 140-minute film, the director settles for presenting a series of scenes that cycle repeatedly between set-up, violent outburst, and aftermath , with little connecting tissue and almost no effort to explain how or why the main character became the dangerous 'monster' he is. With leaps of years and even decades between scenes, it's clear that many of the book's defining incidents failed to make the screenplay, and while the lead and supporting performances are almost uniformly fine, I left the theater exhausted from the violence but feeling nothing for the victims--Kim's family, neighbors and employees--of it. (It is also probable that foreign audiences, not familiar with the cultural, political, and social issues surrounding the ethnic Korean community in Japan, will have trouble appreciating the crucial nuances of language and expression, most of which are unlikely to survive the subtitling process).