PACCHIGI! (WE SHALL OVERCOME SOMEDAY) (Japan – 2004)
Directed by: Kazuyuki Izutsu
Starring: Erika Sawajiri, Shun Shioya, Sosuke Takaoka
“…a big, raw, revitalizing jolt, like walking from a present-day Tokyo street, with its dull, closed-off faces, into a wild student party-cum-riot, circa 1968.”
- Mark Schilling, Japan Times

Awarded the top spot in Japan’s prestigious 2006 Kinema Junpo critic’s poll, this film doles out equal amounts of tender romance and bottle breaking brawling in a raucous retelling of Romeo and Juliet set amidst warring clans of Japanese and Korean students in 1960’s Kyoto. The Korean immigrants who live in Japan and the Japanese who regard them as interlopers bang heads one afternoon in 1968 when a couple of insolent Japanese high school students wander into the Korean part of town on a school outing and mess with a few neighborhood girls. This brings the wrath of the nearby Korean high school and the Japanese students are taught a lesson when they are beaten and then, for good measure, their school bus is tipped over. It’s on between the two schools but amidst all the busted skulls and breaking bottles young Kosuke (Shun Shioya) gets a glimpse of Kyung-Ja (Erika Sawajiri, SHINOBI) and falls in love. They begin to shyly date, but the fighting between the Koreans and Japanese escalates with Kyung-Ja’s tough brother, Ang Son (Sosuke Takaoka), leading the Korean forces. There seems little chance for the couple to realize their love among such bitterness until Kosuke plays the Korean song he learned – “The Imjin River” - on the radio one night and in a finale that will send shivers down your spine the melancholy song wafts over the city at night as the two gangs rumble on the river bank, a friend is put to rest, a baby is born into the world and a young woman runs to the man she loves.

Amusing at times, wrenching at others, PACCHIGI! is a big-boned cinematic spectacle that succeeds where so many other movies fail because it’s actually about something. Fueled by winning performances and giving off a heady whiff of nostalgia there’s a tough, calloused humanity underlying this movie’s sense of spectacle. With all our differences, we’re all just people and all we want - all of us, all over the world - is to take care of our family, our friends and ourselves.