Goodbye Cruel World is a Japanese gangster drama that convinces with an explosive opening sequence, profound characters and a defeatist finale that will leave a lasting impression. This movie revolves around five characters who join forces to solve their urgent financial issues by robbing a yakuza gang that is laundering money in an old-fashioned hotel. Soon after the robbery, profound conflicts between the five characters emerge as they are unable to return to their former lives as planned. The yakuza are also hot on their trails, try to get their money back and want to make an example of the civilians who dared confronting them. Also involved is a clever detective who quickly understands that someone from the inside must have revealed the location of the money laundering to at least one of the civilians.
This film convinces on numerous different levels. The opening twenty minutes are brutal, quick and tense and make for one of the greatest openings of a gangster film in a long period of time. Up next, the movie follows different story lines that intertwine cleverly. Viewers get to observe the nervous yakuza who attempt to get back their money before suffering terrible consequences, a clever detective who wants to prove time and again that he is useful to the criminals and five civilians who naively try to get back to their regular lives. All characters are quite different from one another which makes for a particularly diversified, entertaining and profound film. Viewers get to see two secret lovers looking for a fresh start in their lives, a pitiless gangster attempting to make money by any means necessary and a seemingly peaceful hotel owner with a dark criminal past who gets caught up by current events to only mention a few poignant examples. Step by step, the movie reveals the fate of every character involved, leaving no questions unanswered. The film's finale is particularly memorable and certainly not a welcome surprise for more sensitive audiences while being a pleasure for genre fans who remember Japanese V-cinema from the mid-nineties to the early years of the new millennium quite fondly.
Goodbye Cruel World is however not without its flaws. After a gripping opening twenty minutes, the next forty-five minutes are slow-paced, hesitatingly meandering from one scenario to the next and rarely getting to the point. This part of the movie certainly is the most difficult to sit through for genre fans. The shift back towards a more dynamic, engaging and pitiless approach is then quite sudden to a point that it seems inappropriate. Several scenes towards the beginning of the movie's second half are completely exaggerated, intensely overacted and ridiculously pulled out of thin air. The film's ending then slows the pace down a little bit again and might slightly overstay its welcome. In the end, this movie would have been better with an overall swift and consistent pace by cutting roughly twenty minutes of its length. As it turns out, this movie is too unstable to leave an entirely convincing impression.
At the end of the day, Goodbye Cruel World includes a few creative plot twists and also honours Japanese gangster movies of the nineties very appropriately. The film's meandering pace and at times exaggerated overacting however keep it from being a recommendable genre highlight. I would suggest this movie to experienced fans of Japanese gangster movies who simply don't want to witness this unique genre receding into the background. Those who are however relatively new to the genre have numerous other films to check out first such as Graveyard of Honour, Shinjuku Triad Society and Another Lonely Hitman to only mention a few.
