Binge-r #181: Giri/Haji + Spenser Confidential
Tokyo Story: Kelly Macdonald (Sarah) and Takehiro Hira (Kenzo) in Giri/Haji
GIRI/HAJI
Streaming Service: Netflix
Availability: All eight episodes new streaming
A simmering crime thriller and a meditation on family bonds, this British series about a Japanese police detective searching for his wayward brother in London is at its core an examination of how and why we decide to offer help. The lengths characters go to, sometimes generous but self-destructive at others, to provide assistance is often how they’re best understood, even if they can’t see it themselves. “There aren’t words for everything,” one hard-nosed character reminds a colleague, but what someone does supposedly in the aid of another can tell us everything we need to know. What comes through in Joe Barton’s limited series is how helping others can be a salve for your own incurable problems.
That’s nuanced terrain for what readily resembles a police procedural, but Giri/Haji (the translation is Duty/Shame) moves to a different beat from the initial scenes, where the before and after of an instigating crime in London are seen but not the act itself, and the recrimination in Tokyo where the Japanese victim’s Yakuza associates machine-gun rivals but the police are diligently polite in their enquiries. When it appears that his younger brother, Yuto (Yosuke Kubozuka), a criminal thought dead, is involved, police detective Kenzo Mori (Takehiro Hira) is sent to London on false pretences to find her errant sibling. Without authority, he’s another wisp in London’s cold wind, a status that suits Hira’s melancholic portrayal of a conflicted investigator.
The plot is very good at providing slabs of information, whether through flashbacks marked by different screen ratios or concise recaps of past exploits, which clarify the story but muddy the morality. Kenzo is not merely the good son of his family, and equally his relationship with a London police detective, Sarah Weitzmann (Kelly Macdonald), is not as obvious as you first imagine. Like most of the leads, Sarah is a loner through circumstances she created and now struggles to endure, and loneliness is a fascinating defining quality in the realm of hardboiled detectives. Even as further strands in Tokyo feed into the narrative, the protagonists think about what they should do and worry about repercussions. There’s something very human – that is, intrinsically flawed – about what happens here. On Giri/Haji the crimes matter because they’re closely held.
“How many thumbs down?” Mark Wahlberg (Spenser) and Winston Duke (Hawk) in Spenser Confidential
NEWLY ADDED MOVIES
SPENSER CONFIDENTIAL (Netflix, 2020, 111 minutes): A good Hollywood action-comedy will have a degree of familiarity. It wants to show you a timeless plot and readymade supporting cast so that you can appreciate the distinguishing riffs and enlightening twists. But a bad Hollywood action-comedy – such as the tepid Spenser Confidential – is just inert and way too familiar. Mark Wahlberg, once again working with director Peter Berg (Lone Survivor, Mile 22) plays Spenser, a former Boston cop whose righteous stance got him five years and even more fighting skills in jail. Upon release he soon proceeds to stir up more trouble, with corrupt former colleagues and various criminals who unfortunately all fail to kill him before the final act. Winston Duke (Us) does decent sidekick work, but everything from the combat choreography to Spenser being baffled that footage he needs is “on the cloud” feels like it was recycled from a menu of better movies. No actor’s default setting is more sapping than Wahlberg’s is.
New on SBS on Demand: Built around a masterfully undefined Juliette Binoche performance, Let the Sunshine In (2017, 91 minutes) is a rumination on attraction and satisfaction from the legendary Claire Denis; Before Hustlers Lorene Scafaria made The Meddler (2015, 99 minutes), a mother and daughter study starring Susan Sarandon and Rose Byrne that mostly focuses on the bittersweet experiences of the latter’s widow in transit.
New on Stan: A wrenching inhalation of desire and punishment in 1950s Britain from the great English filmmaker Terence Davies, The Deep Blue Sea (2011, 99 minutes) has definitive roles for Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston, and Simon Russell Beale; Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture (2010, 96 minutes) is where Girls took shape: autobiographical candour, 20something ennui, and sexual expression all feature.
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