Idiot Boxing: Giri/Haji (2019)

Pretty entertaining crime drama/thriller that uses its "East meets West" themes to good effect, though it didn't exactly stick the landing. 

Giri/Haji ("Duty/Shame" in English) is a British production that tells of a Japanese detective in London, attempting to track down his wayward brother. The detective, Kenzo (Takehiro Hira), is on the trail of his brother Yuto (Yosuke Kobozuka) after Yuto potentially sets off a massive war between two yakuza families back in Tokyo. Yuto has long been the charming-but-untamable black sheep of the family, often getting into serious trouble that requires his older brother to bail him out. Continuing this pattern, Kenzo leaves behind more than a little family drama and ostensibly enrolls in a criminology class in London, using the class as a cover for his detective work following Yuto. Several other London locals become involved in Kenzo's case, including the half-Japanese male prostitute Rodney (Will Sharpe), the teacher of the criminology class Detective Donna Clark (Sophia Brown), and several others. As the cat-and-mouse game progresses, tensions and violence continue to mount not just for Kenzo and Yuto, but for anyone in or even close to the large criminal organizations involved.

This show was solid for the most part. The struggle of Kenzo to constantly play big brother and get his younger brother out of scrapes is effective, if not exactly a novel idea. But weaving that eternal, fraternal struggle into a cop/criminal narrative adds an interesting layer to the tale. Beyond that, you have the Japanese brothers and their families dealing with navigating England, the British crime landscape, and its ramifications. This sets up some compelling culture clashes and revelations, especially when every character has some serious personal flaws and demons. The primary conflict, as the title of the show indicates, is Kenzo's sense of duty to his selfish, reckless younger brother and the shame that he feels for continuing to enable him. This conflict can be seen in nearly every other major character in the show, though it never bashes you over the head too hard with the point. 

The performances are strong, though I did sense that the two primary Japanese actors Hira and Kobozuka did not have a great grasp of English pronunciation and intonation, leading to a somewhat stilted delivery of their English lines (and they both have a decent amount of English lines). That aside, the actors were all excellent, most notably Will Sharpe as Rodney, the troubled young male prostitute with an attitude and heart. Though less involved in the more sensational crime stories, his was sometimes the most emotional tale, and it added a different type of depth to the show. 

Rodney (front), hanging out in one of his many
nighttime haunts. Will Sharpe turns in a great 
performance as the tough-but-tortured man.

The show is set apart from other crime dramas thanks to a few things, most of which work. There is certainly a nice amount of levity in the form of cultural misunderstandings and the oft-cynical nature of some of the characters. The British crime boss Abbott, played brilliantly by Charles Creed-Myles, adds a wild, comically charismatic tough guy of the type that you might find in Guy Ritchie's better films or the British gangster movies of the 1970s and '80s. In both the London and Tokyo settings, we get a few amusing characters and moments sprinkled in with the drama and thrills. 

The creators of Giri/Haji decided to add a few flourishes that you rarely or never see in such a show. Some work, such as the anime-style, cell-shaded recaps to start each new episode. One or two I found more questionable, such as the interpretive dance performance thrown into the middle of a very intense, dramatic scene. And the show didn't do a great job of offering satisfying conclusions to its several storylines, even if it did fine with most of the main threads. 

It seemed as if the story ended, making this a single season mini-series. If that's the case, it did nice work. Were they to do a second season, I don't know that I would go way out of my way to catch it. This one season was solid and entertaining enough, though it didn't completely stick the landing as well as it could have.