A family
Netflix
*ing: Go Ayano, Hiroshi Tachi, Machiko Ono, Yukiya Kitamura
Rated: 5.5/10
There have been movies that show how the Yakuza are a dreaded lot — the underworld crime lords who run things and control everything — from people’s lives to businesses. But what is the reality? Do they still wield such power in the 21th Century? A Family, Japanese drama, through the eyes of Kenji Yamamoto aka Lil Ken (Go Ayano) takes the viewers on a journey of a boy who is taken in by the Yakuza and treated like family only to find himself in a world that has changed so much that there is no place for the Yakuza anymore — a world that now shuns them.
But it is more than just about the criminal family, their honour and way of life. It is about Kenji’s journey that began as a street punk to a trusted lieutenant of the family; his conflict and need to avenge an attack on his boss, his need to try and adjust to the changed world once he is out after serving 15 years behind bars and in the end feel his sadness when he finds that he has lost all the honour that he once stood for.
Go Ayano plays his character well. His anger, a young street thug, his rise in the Yakuza, to finally find a family that he wanted only to find himself without a home, without criminal means and worst of all without his adopted family is palpable.
At the end, A Family is a journey about a man’s need to have a family that he can call his own and this makes this film heartening to watch.