Masatoshi
Nagase, Keisuke Horibe, Yoshinori Okada, Akemi Kobayashi, Tadanobu
Asano
Katsuhito Ishii follows up on his loony, phantasmagoric work Samehada
Otoko to Momojiri Onna with this dizzyingly bizarre gangster drama.
Low-level yakuza Miki (Masatoshi Nagase) decides that he's had enough
of the gangster life and swipes 200 million yen from his boss. He
winds up hiding out in a remote dive called Hotel New Mexico, which
is run by a middle-aged peeping tom (Yoshio Harada). The proprietor
is so much the voyeur that he has fashioned a room in which he can
see into every other room in the establishment. Donning yellow tights,
a crescent moon-shaped mask, and a box of kleenex, he assumes his
special voyeur identity -- Captain Banana -- as he watches his clientele.
Sharing his peeping room is Okita (Tadanobu Asano), the geeky, whey-faced
son of Captain Banana's dead partner. As the peeping duo look on,
Miki gets a series of unwelcome visitors starting with his slinky
ex-girlfriend, Kana (Akemi Kobayashi), who though married to a very
rich man named Todohira (Yoshinori Okada), will not pay up the debt
that she owes him. Soon Todohira too makes an unwelcome entrance,
followed by thuggish gangster Sonoda (Keisuke Horibe) and his superior
who demanded the return of Miki's ill-gotten goods. Finally, a sociopathic
gangland hitman drops by sporting a ludicrously large perm, a gun,
and a hair-trigger temper.
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