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DVD REVIEW ARCHIVE
KINJITE: FORBIDDEN SUBJECTS (1989)
MGM DVD (region 1)
d. J. Lee Thompson; pr. Pancho Kohner; scr. Harold Nebenzal; ph. Gideon Porath; m. Greg DeBelles; ed. Mary E, Jochem, Peter Lee Thompson; cast. Charles Bronson, Perry Lopez, Juan Fernandez, James Pax, Peggy Lipton, Marion Yue, Bill McKinney (97 mins)
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ORIGINAL POSTER ART
Misanthropy and Child Sexual Exploitation
Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects was the final film in a nine film partnership between actor Charles Bronson and director J. Lee Thompson.
It was also Thompson’s last film as director in a career spanning forty years and which had seen him take in such classics as The Guns of Navarone and Cape Fear as well as the last two Planet of the Apes sequels. Ironically not only was Kinjite the summary of the Bronson works, it was also the most controversial film from Bronson since the original Death Wish some fifteen years earlier. Kinjite drew scorn for its violence, naturally, but also for what critics felt was a misanthropic and sensationalist look at child sexual exploitation. Many felt that such touchy subjects were simply out of place in a Charles Bronson vigilante film as if the genre which Bronson had made such a dominant part of his image was simply not mature enough to accommodate such social concerns without inherently simplifying or exploiting them. Thus, although Kinjite was recognized as being well made technically it was considered morally abhorrent, exploitative and racist. As such it represents Thompson at his most unequivocal about the depths to which Patriarchal society has sunk and the perversion with which the supposedly righteous approach the immorality they see and hypocritically condemn around them. As such, Kinjite is the culmination of the exploration of vigilantism throughout the Bronson / Thompson films.
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TRAILER
Synopsis (contains spoilers)
In Kinjite, Bronson plays a policeman and father to a teenage daughter. He has a purely obsessive hatred for child exploiters, centering on a slimy pimp (Juan Fernandez) whose specialty is finding and supplying teenage whores for wealthy and affluent male clients.
In a parallel plot in Japan, a businessman is being trained in Western traditions and is given a job in the USA. On a bus he feels up a young woman who does not protest. When in the USA, he tries the same thing on a teenage girl – Bronson’s daughter – only she does protest as he runs away and she goes to the cops with her story of molestation. Bronson is outraged by this and takes his hatred against any Asians within his reach. In an ironic comeuppance, the Japanese businessman’s young daughter – about the same age as Bronson’s daughter – is kidnapped by Fernandez and his associates, raped by three men, and put to work as a child prostitute in his organization. Bronson is assigned to the case, which he does not want to take due to the Asian aspect of the people involved. He soon takes this as another excuse to harass Fernandez even further, intimidating and roughing him up. Fernandez attempts a sudden reprisal which does not go as planned. Bronson follows the trail of the girl, hoping to get yet another teenage girl to testify against Fernandez. Although he saves the Asian girl, she soon commits suicide and Bronson takes matters into his own hands.
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Moral Relativism as Cultural Differences re: Gender and Teenage Sexuality
KINJITE EXTRACTS
Kinjite makes much out of its premise of a culture clash, contrasting Japanese behavioral codes with western codes, as they center on young women. The sexual attraction for teen girls is the dominant undertext here and the three male protagonists – Bronson, Fernandez and the businessman – are all contrasted in terms of their active desires or, in the case of Bronson, their repressed desires and paternalistic responsibility.
Bronson refuses to admit his daughter’s burgeoning sexuality; Fernandez would exploit it, whilst the businessman is attracted to it. The patriarchal spectrum here is depicted in terms of their approach to sexual immorality. Although Bronson is the “hero” here, Thompson truly undercuts his paternalistic righteousness in several scenes. In fact, as Bronson (offscreen) uses a dildo to either beat up or sodomize a man who had been having sex with underage girls, Bronson is barely able to see just how his sexual repression and his disgust for the immorality represented by the sleazy Fernandez has transformed him into an equally amoral pervert. Bronson, however, can hide behind law and order just as he is willing to go beyond it if he feels outraged enough: and the course of such outrage is sexual exploitation, one founded on cultural codes which may in fact be relative rather than absolute. Indeed, Kinjite is an appeal for relativism, finding nothing but perversion in any recourse to absolutism.
What is remarkable about Kinjite is the appeal to relativism exists in a context of almost misanthropic loathing for the future of Patriarchy, here seen as irredeemably corrupted by sexual perversion.
The repressive sexual hang-ups of a generation of older men are seen in the context of the burgeoning codes of adolescent sexuality. Although the film is full of just loathing for those who exploit children in terms of the allegory of sexual attitudes, it is merely another end of the relative spectrum and no more or less perverse than Bronson’s stern and violent sense of righteous justice. Indeed, Bronson here gives a most unfavorable portrayal, somewhat undercutting the image he has cultivated over the previous fifteen years and this makes Kinjite the most self-consciously iconoclastic of the Bronson / Thompson films. It sets out to subvert what has been held dear in Bronson’s image – the paternalistic righteousness of a wronged Patriarchal authority figure – and here reconstitutes it as an integral part of what might be termed a broader cinema of moral aberration. The ambivalence with which director Thompson tackles this subject does not distract from its validity as social criticism and even meta-cinematic comment on his previous work, its ending also neatly echoing situations as far back as Cape Fear and bringing Thompson’s career full circle. Kinjite is, despite its awful and sad reputation, a fitting conclusion to an intriguing body of work.
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Sexual Anarchy & the Crisis of Patriarchal Authority
The visual transfer is available in anamorphic widescreen. From the opening use of an ad on a billboard, it posits a kind of lax sexual morality – indeed, sexual anarchy even – as what Patriarchal authority is inherently in reaction against.
The reactionary self-righteousness of Bronson here is seen as the product of an ambiguous but distinct sexual morality inherently perverse despite the loyal pretenses at decency. The film is suitably glossy and grim in its depiction of urban locales and makes much out of the clash between Japanese and western values regarding young women and sexual behavior. Out of this clash comes a distinct look at relativism vs. absolutism. Teenage sexuality is handled with complexity, both suggestive of natural development and conscious of the explicit adult sexualization of teenagers as a part of patriarchal sexual morality which many try in vain to suppress. Although it does not suggest it better left unrepressed, the handling of teenage erotica is morally ambivalent. Good use is made of the wider Asian-American community as a presence which sets Bronson off on his racist tirades. Male desire for young women is always seen in a cultural and social context which frames it as a crisis of Patriarchy. The suicide scene is delicately handled in a feel for differing cultural customs. Action scenes are effective and much is made of Bronson’s sheer sadistic joy in intimidating Fernandez.
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Racism, Paternalism & the Pornographic Fringe
The sound transfer is available in a fine and engrossing Dolby digital stereo surround, fully preserving what is a superior sound design.
The streets have an auditory presence as do the various locations the characters move through – places of recreation being a motif of sorts in the story of the Japanese businessman. Differences in manner and formality between the respective cultures are also well conveyed. Ambient effects are crisp and the deflowering of the young Japanese girl makes good use of the room sounds and the suggestion of what is happening offscreen left to the imagination. Fernandez is suitably smarmy and there is a concern for the operations of the pornographic filmmaking fringe around him (reflecting to some degree themes in the previous Cannon film 52 Pick Up by John Frankenheimer). In Kinjite, Bronson is as forceful and authoritative as usual but his voice also betrays his inner sense of insecurity about his daughter’s sexuality. Both Bronson’s racism and paternalistic suppression of his own sexual loathing is conveyed in the script. As is usual for a Thompson and Bronson venture, good use is made of the segue from diegetic sound to non-diegetic sound and the score is judiciously used throughout. The transfer is always crisp, keeping the careful but mildly layered audio mix alive. Interior audio spaces are contrasted with exteriors and there is an attention to small details in interaction at times.
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DVD Bits and Pieces
As is usual for the Bronson / Thompson Cannon films on MGM DVD, the only special feature is a theatrical trailer. Sadly, there is nothing about the film itself or about the other films in this joint venture – 10 to Midnight; The Evil That Men Do; Murphy’s Law; Death Wish 4: the Crackdown and Messenger of Death.
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AMAZON.COM PURCHASE INFORMATION: Kinjite - Forbidden Subjects
AMAZON.CO.UK DVD PURCHASE INFORMATION: Kinjite - Forbidden Subjects [DVD] [1989]
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