Gonin

For other uses, see Gonin (disambiguation).

Gonin
Film poster for Gonin
Directed by	Takashi Ishii
Produced by	Katsuhide Motoki Taketo Niitsu Takuto Niizu
Written by	Takashi Ishii
Starring	Takeshi Kitano Kōichi Satō Masahiro Motoki Jinpachi Nezu Kippei Shiina
Music by	Goro Yasukawa
Cinematography	Yasushi Sasakibara
Edited by	Akimasa Kawashima
Release dates	23 September 1995 (1995-09-23) (Japan)
Running time	109 minutes
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese

Gonin (Japanese: ゴニン (５人) or, in some English-language editions, The Five) is a 1995 film directed by Takashi Ishii and starring Takeshi Kitano, Kōichi Satō, and Masahiro Motoki. This was the first film Kitano starred in after his 1994 motorcycle accident. The eye patch the character wears was because his right eye was still leaking fluids.

Summary

Bandai (Sato) is a disco owner whose business, following the collapse of Japan's "bubble economy", is slowly disintegrating, and who owes debts to local Yakuza money he cannot possibly pay. His solution is to rob the gangsters, for which purpose he assembles a team consisting of other casualties of the economic downturn—including a hustler (Motoki) who frequents his club (and who, depending on how you interpret the film's opening credits, may or may not have stabbed him in the face), a down-on-his-luck ex-cop (Jinpachi Nezu), an unbalanced salaryman (Naoto Takenaka), the extent of whose derangement is unclear until the film's most notorious and horrifying scene, and a Thai pimp (Kippei Shiina, in a strange, convincingly brain-damaged performance). The hastily planned heist goes off awkwardly, and the Yakuza start tracking down the conspirators, hiring a team of hitmen (Kitano and Kazuya Kimura) to take out the thieves.

Cast

• Kōichi Satō as Mikihiko Bandai
• Masahiro Motoki as Junichi Mitsuya
• Jinpachi Nezu as Kaname Hizu
• Kippei Shiina as Jimmy
• Naoto Takenaka as Shohei Ogiwara
• Megumi Yokoyama
• Eiko Nagashima
• Maiko Kawakami
• Hideo Murota
• Kazuya Kimura
• Shingo Tsurumi
• Toshiyuki Nagashima
• Takeshi Kitano as Ichiro Kyoya

External links

• Gonin at AllMovie
• Gonin at IMDb
• (Japanese) Gonin at the Japanese Movie Database