Round About Midnight (1999)

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Like the film "The Set-Up", this story is shown in real time. The story of a hapless ordinary guy who is pulled by a woman into a situation where he ends up in deep danger has been done in many noir and non-noir films. It's still entertaining if the couple and the villains are interesting. This and some humorous moments (like the tv viewer and the homeless man) make this film worth a viewing.

This film, starring Hiroyuki Sanada and Michelle Reis (Fallen Angels, Kiddo in Swordsman II, etc.), was almost perfect. I'd describe it as kinder, gentler neo-noir. I know, I know, it's not really a noir if there are nice surprises. Everyone's supposed to get killed in a noir. I can sympathize with that--I like a good hard-boiled full-on noirer-than-noir noir myself (like the awesome Sleepless Town, another Japanese film, starring Takeshi Kaneshiro--worth a look if you haven't seen it already). But Round About Midnight had all the noir elements--a dame causing the hero trouble, crooked cops, jazz clubs, chases through town. It just didn't take place in the kind of world where everything always go wrong, and as a result the movie has a light touch and a sense of humor throughout that made it fun for the whole family (I don't really have a family, but you get my drift). But that's not to say it's fluff--it's really good. My girlfriend liked it, too, although she thought it was "sappy" in parts (though she may just be grumpy because I've made her watch too many Asian movies over the last couple of days). My one problem: I wanted Michelle Reis to change shoes SO badly. She spends half of the movie running, and she's wearing these impossible strappy little shoes WITH HEELS! It hurt just watching her. And it's not like those were a stunt double's feet! The poor woman. Anyway, the film is worth the price of admission just to see how many ways they thought of to use a trumpet as a weapon. The main character, you see, is a jazz trumpet player, and throughout the whole film he wants to get back to his club by midnight to play his second set. So he's carrying his trumpet in one hand during THE ENTIRE FILM, except for one moment near the end when he gets in a fistfight and Michelle Reis picks it up. But no more about that, because that's the end, and I don't want to give it away...