Fireworks

Detective Yoshitaka Nishi is a policeman whose life has come apart. His wife is terminally ill, and a colleague, Horibe, has been left paralysed after a violent incident. Burdened by debts he took on to pay for his wife's care, Nishi leaves the force and turns to crime, robbing a bank to settle what he owes. His plan is to take his wife on one final journey together, but the yakuza he borrowed from are not willing to let him walk away, and the violence that has shadowed his life follows him on the road.

Fireworks was directed and written by Takeshi Kitano, his sixth film as director in a run that began in the late 1980s, following Kids Return and preceding Kikujiro. Kitano also stars as Nishi, with Kayoko Kishimoto as his wife, Ren Osugi as Horibe, Susumu Terajima as Nakamura, Tetsu Watanabe and Hakuryu in supporting roles. Made in Japan by Bandai Visual, TV Tokyo, Tokyo FM and Office Kitano, it runs 103 minutes.

Audiences rate the film highly, at 7.7 on IMDb across some 35,000 votes and the same score on TMDB, while a critics' rating of 8.6 from 24 reviews places it somewhat higher with reviewers. The relatively modest vote count on TMDB alongside the much larger IMDb figure reflects a film that has circulated widely among international audiences over the decades since its 1997 release.