Bunraku

Completely pointless and utterly unwatchable, Bunraku tells the larger-than-life story of several battles that ensues within a lawless town after a mysterious stranger (Josh Hartnett) rolls in one day. It’s frankly impossible to discern just what filmmaker Guy Moshe initially set out to do with Bunraku, as the movie comes off as a pervasively and aggressively incompetent piece of work that doesn’t seem to boast any positive attributes. Moshe’s efforts at evoking a colorful, comic-book-style world fall completely flat right from the word go, with the movie’s gaudy sets, which seem like they’d be more at home on the old Batman television series, immediately setting a tone of unreasonable cartoonishness. It’s the filmmaker’s refusal to offer up even a shred of context that transforms Bunraku into a seriously interminable piece of work, however, as there’s never a point at which either the characters or the story become compelling enough to justify all this silliness. Moshe’s progressively desperate attempts at turning Bunraku into a cult classic are nothing short of pathetic, and it’s ultimately impossible not to wonder just which demographic the film has been designed to appeal to. Adding insult to injury is an absurdly overlong running time that ensures that Bunraku often feels longer than a 12-part miniseries, and although there is admittedly one sequence that fares relatively well (an Elevator Action-inspired action sequence set in a hotel), Bunraku primarily and pervasively comes off as an attempt on a Sin City or Kill Bill-style actioner by a thoroughly inept filmmaker who has absolutely no idea what he’s doing.

no stars out of ****