Comments: Random acts of weirdness turn out to be clues to an unsurprising, yet reasonable reveal. I had a lot of fun watching this. The Japanese are my favorite at plowing through absurdity with a straight face. The director employs a few visual flourishes to remind that this isn't a real crime thriller. The cops provide comic relief while the bad guys are almost frozen in their steadfast psychological drama. Asô Kumiko and Abe Hiroshi are present for credibility. I love Asô Kumiko and the film is mostly hers. She's pretty low key, doesn't swing her arms much when she walks, but she's still engaging, becoming more so as the film progresses and you get on board with her and her hilarious attempts at suicide. The moral of the story needs a bucketload of salt but who cares? It's not laugh out loud funny but it's a good dark comedy of inner-child pain and murder. Not a lot, but a little, blood. The goriest thing has to be the nicotine stew Asô cooks up for herself.
Summary: The Man Behind the Scissors centers around two serial killers: mastermind Yasunaga and helper Chinatsu. The two risk being found out when the police question them as witnesses to a gruesome murder they themselves may have committed. A quirky and perplexing police thriller centered around two murderers who thrive on slicing up schoolgirls. Calculated serial psycho Yasunaga (Tokokawa) and Chinatsu (Aso), his sweet female sidekick, find themselves being questioned as witnesses to a murder when their next potential victim turns up dead...with their M.O.
Hasami otoko
2005
Japan
The Man Behind the Scissors
