Directed by Hideo Gosha. Written by Kôji Takada.
Heat Wave wants to win you over whichever way it can. You like to see a little flesh? Here’s plenty, both sexualized and non-sexualized. You want stabbings and their accompanying blood spurts? Gotcha. You like a tragic lover’s story? Sure thing! Or perhaps a soft touch with some generational trauma steeped in melodrama? Say no more.
Unfortunately, you’re left with something akin to those diners with a many-paged monstrosity of a menu. Those tome-like food encyclopedias that offer you pancakes, hamburgers, minestrone soup, lasagna, root beer floats and bloody caesars all at once, at 7:30 a.m. Fine things on their own, but put in the same playpen as the rest, they suddenly become a gimmick, an unpracticed and uncared for trick.
There’s no doubting Gosha’s energy, however, as the waiter-chef-proprietor of this rinky-dink diner where he tells the story of Rin Joshima, a professional gambler playing in a national circuit of events put on by wealthy clans in 1920s Japan. As a child, she watched her desperate father cheat and rob a card game, and it cost him his life, struck down in gruesome fashion in front of her. Adopted by a wealthy family, she nonetheless grows up to be a renowned gambler in her own right.
Returning to her hometown, she learns the restaurant her adoptive family owned has fallen into the hands of racketeers and her step-brother ousted from his rightful place as its owner. Backed by a wealthy clan, she enters into a tournament put on by the usurpers, where she comes face to face with a legendary gambler who killed her father in more ways than one. Time for a showdown.
Takada’s script has its characters fighting for space, and Gosha’s not short on angles when it comes time to film it all. He gives each character and coupling its own genre-style, and watching Heat Wave weave in and out is like eating a bagful of marshmallows mixed in with pop rocks, bringing together comedy, action, suspense, melodrama and schmaltz. The parts end up being less than their sum, with each choppy change cutting the movie’s momentum off at the knees. When the movie’s story finally takes a turn for the ludicrous, with a romantic twist that borders on deranged, you’ve already stopped caring.
What’s worse, in a movie where gambling takes on a central role, these moments fall flat. Gosha uses games to drive a wider point about fate vs. chance, but it’s surprisingly the one part of his movie he doesn’t bring his usual zeal to, with the high-stakes showdowns unfolding with the same energy as schoolyard coin toss.
There are many great parts to Heat Wave: Masaru Satô’s score is as bracing as they come and fit for any grand tale of revenge and redemption. It has stern-looking men and women making chill-inducing proclamations, and some of the compositions are a joy to take in. The story, and Gosha’s treatment of it, however, leaves you with little to hold onto, reducing Heat Wave to a bodybuilder rapidly changing poses to show off a particular muscle, flexing itself into nonsense.
Mikkel Frederiksen 