Bôkoku no îjisu (2005)

Director:

Junji Sakamoto

Writers:

Harutoshi Fukui (novel)
Yasuo Hasegawa (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

30 July 2005 (Japan)

Genre:

Action | Drama | Thriller | War

Plot Keywords:

Navy | Military | North Korea | National Security | Tokyo Japan

Awards:

2 wins & 11 nominations

Cast

Hiroyuki Sanada	...	Hisashi Sengoku
Akira Terao	...	Hirotaka Miyazu
Kôichi Satô	...	Diasuke Atsumi
Kiichi Nakai	...	Yong Fa
Ryo Katsuji	...	Kou Kisaragi
Min-seo Chae	...	Jon-hee
Eisaku Yoshida	...	Isamu Takenaka
Shosuke Tanihara	...	Yudai Kazama
Isao Toyohara	...	Takeshi Sugiura
Masanobu Ando	...	Don-chol
Yoshio Harada	...	Koichiro Kajimoto
Mieko Harada	...	Yoshie Miyazu
Ittoku Kishibe	...	Kazuma Seto
Kurôdo Maki	...	Yoshiaki Munakata
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Mike Han
Jun Hashizume
Sei Hiraizumi
Mansaku Ikeuchi
Miyuki Komatsu
Shunsuke Matsuoka
Ken Mitsuishi
Ryû Morioka
Ikuji Nakamura
Seiroku Nakazawa
Katsuhiko Sasaki
Takashi Shikauchi
Kenji Takechi	...	Daisu
Kosuke Toyohara
Ken'ichi Yajima
Toshiaki Yamada

Also Known As:

Aegis (International: English title)

Runtime:

126 min

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Color:

Color

Certification:

South Korea:15

Filming Locations:

Japan

Company:

Cross Media

Die Hard with the Japanese Navy

Aegis is an entertaining movie. If you like action yarns like "Die Hard" or "Under Siege", this movie fills the bill. Betrayal in the upper ranks of the Japanese Navy allows a foreign agent to threaten Japan with a deadly chemical bomb. A Japanese destroyer equipped with the AEGIS system, a defensive mechanism that renders it nearly impervious to conventional air assault, is carrying the stolen weapon to Tokyo. How to stop it?? There is a lot of political undercurrent in the movie. If you've looked at some of the other comments from Japanese viewers you get some idea of what it's all about. What is Japan's role in the world? Is a nation under threat, as Japan now sees itself, able to live with a pacifist constitution? These questions are asked repeatedly in the film and events suggest what the answers could or should be.

It is interesting that the weapon threatening Tokyo is of American making, that the agent's acquisition of the weapon is due to some sort of American blundering and, as one character in the movie relates matters, it is now Japan's job to clean up the mess. Additionally, the nationality of the "foreign agent" is never identified, but his name and several clues strongly suggest, to this viewer at least, that he is of North Korean extraction. One could conjecture at length what all of this implies, but I'll leave that to the individual viewer.

I would add that, at about 2 hours 15 minutes, the movie is a little too long. Some of the hand-wringing over questions of nationhood and national defense are inserted at awkward moments for an action yarn. But judging from Japanese viewer comments these scenes had some resonance. A less passionate audience is apt to see this for the melodrama it is. As far as Hollywood "fast food" content, this film is chock full of it. Some of the action sequences are clearly cliché and borrow heavily from older American flicks like "Die Hard". In spite of these several weaknesses, this is still enjoyable entertainment.