JIM Reviews film "HANA" [ & reports on FREE Summer movies each Wednesday ]

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“HANA” – Revenge isn’t always as ‘Sweet’ as it’s cracked up to be =

Rating: 7 of 10 stars.

On June 10th, the Chicago Int’l Film Festival inaugurated its SUMMER SCREENINGS program wherein a foreign [usually-subtitled] film will be shown for FREE every WEDNESDAY (usually at 6:30 PM) at Chicago’s CULTURAL CENTER (across from Millennium Park, on the 2nd floor) for the next 15 weeks.

The opening selection was the Japanese film “HANA”: in this, a samurai warrior was killed, and his son Sozaemon is expected to follow “tradition” & REVENGE the death by ritually slaying the killer. But Soza really doesn’t WANT to kill anyone, preferring his life as a TEACHER to young kids — & partly because he’s very bad at fighting (& various other such pursuits). Many well-known Japanese stars appear in this film. While it’s sometimes hard to keep track of just who’s who, the movie does a fine job in creating the ‘atmosphere’ of a lower-class area of Edo in the generally-peaceful time of the early 1600’s. There are lots of memorable characters, many of whom add a lot of HUMOR to the situation (which involves trying to fake the revenge at one point), and it was a good beginning to the series… Next week (on June 17th), the Festival is showing a tension-filled Romanian film about 2 teenagers who get trapped in an elevator.