Gentle Twelve

Dir: Mitani Koki
Writer: Koki Mitani
Starring: Kazayuki Ajima
Year: 1991

If Hitchcock had been born in Japan, he might have directed something like this. The atmostphere is quite like his early-ish films, and in a similar way to Rope, almost the entire film is set in one room. A juror's room.

Gentle Twelve is as much about the Japanese character as it is about deciding whether a bar hostess is guilty of murder or not. People agree with each other just to get an easy answer, people don't know why they think what they think, and others staunchly hold to one opinion in the face of facts.

Mitani Koki wrote this film, and it's got his fingerprints all over it. It's even got his signature weakness of being a wee bit too long. Or, to be more correct, it would have been better if he had made it a bit shorter (see also The Magic Hour and The Wow-Choten Hotel).

Overall, it's a cracker of a film, though, that pokes fun at Japan inside of a very interesting story.

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