NYAFF Review: Nobuhiro Yamashita’s HARD-CORE Spotlights The Mechanics Of Being Alive
Nobuhiro Yamashita takes on artful drama with a sci-fi twist in Hard-Core, based on Takashi Imashiro’s 1993 manga, and marking Yamashita’s own debut foray into sci-fi. It’s pretty much a slow-burn process to work through but the characters in their iteration here are made interesting enough that you’re compelled for the most part to stick with it to the end. We meet our lead character in Ukon (Takayuki Yamada), a scruffy, down-and-out barfly whose wayward path eventually lands him employment with an aging nationalist named Kaneshiro (Takuzo Kibukukuri), who wants to re-educate today’s youth. He finds friendship in Ushiyama (Yoshiyoshi Arakawa), a kindhearted mute, and the two are then-led to a cave in the Gunma Prefecture where they’re commissioned to dig for Shogun’s buried gold. The two share a room together near an abandoned factory whereupon during one evening, Ushiyama discovers what he thinks at first is a corpse. He […]