隣人13号
Neighbour Number 13

Japanese 2005
http://www.amuse-s-e.co.jp/rinjin13

Based on a manga by Santa "Tokyo Tribes" Inoue and produced by Yoshinori Chiba, the man behind some of most attention-grabbing Japanese films of the 90s, among which Takashi Miike's Fudoh and Rokuro Mochizuki's superlative The Fire Within, The Neighbour #13 comes from quite a pedigree. It has two of the best young actors in Japan in the lead roles: kabuki dynasty scion Shido Nakamura (Ping Pong, Iden & Tity) and Hirofumi Arai of Go, Blue Spring and Blood and Bones fame, plus a cameo by Takashi Miike, who by now must surely be one of the archipelago's main cultural exports. At the helm of it all, however, stands a young director making his big screen debut. And he might well be the most eye-catching element of the entire package.

Juzo (Oguri) is a young introvert, the victim of a childhood reign of terror visited upon him by a bullying classmate named Akai. When he takes a job at a construction site, he discovers to his horror that his foreman is none other than his own former tormentor (Arai), now all grown and having lost none of his violent whims. These days it's the menial hands around the lot that Akai brutalises, seemingly with impunity. Not realising who the new guy is, Akai automatically subjects Juzo to the same treatment. When the young man finds out that Akai actually lives upstairs from him in the apartment block he just moved into, his traumas come to the surface and begin to manifest themselves in the shape of a split personality, #13 (Nakamura). The psychotic personification of years' worth of anger and frustrations, #13 - the kanji for the name Juzo can also be read as 'thirteen' - begins to coldbloodedly eliminate anything and anybody that causes Juzo the slightest amount of trouble, starting with a noisy next door neighbour (Miike). But by the time Juzo realises what has happened, he has already bonded with Akai's unexpectedly lovely wife (Yoshimura, of J-poppers Puffy) and cute son, and #13 isn't being too discriminate about his targets.