Takeshis'

In this five-year-old, uncharacteristi­cally self-indulgent piece, writer-director Takeshi Kitano (aka Beat Takeshi), Japan's favourite screen tough guy, talk-show host, wit and singer, plays two characters. The first is himself, apparently making, simultaneously or back to back, a Second World war movie and a yakuza thriller. The other, a bland, blond cashier in a Tokyo convenience store with acting ambitions, fantasises that he's Kitano and begins to take over his life. A promising opening gives way to a succession of pointless, self-mocking, seemingly arbitrary jokes about identity.