Review: 'Kokuho' sets up an epic backstage clash amid the highly lacquered world of kabuki theater

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Director Sang-il Lee sets his epic-scaled “Kokuho” in the vivid world of kabuki theater, but it’s not just the movie’s milieu that distinguishes it.Spanning 50 years and running nearly three hours, “Kokuho,” which has become Japan’s biggest live-action hit ever, evinces intensely mixed feelings about its two main characters’ quest for greatness.

Kabuki is presented as an art form of balletic skill, but it can never fully redeem or repair the film’s central figures, who once were friends before ambition got in the way.In 1964 Nagasaki, 14-year-old Kikuo (Soya Kurokawa) performs at a New Year’s event, impressing Hanjiro (Ken Watanabe), a beloved kabuki legend.But after Kikuo’s father, a yakuza crime boss, is murdered, Hanjiro takes the grieving teen under his wing.

Soon, Hanjiro is training Kikuo and his own son Shunsuke (Keitatsu Koshiyama) in his Osaka studio to become “onnagata” — male kabuki actors who portray female characters.Both sweet and bashful, Kikuo and Shunsuke quickly grow close, enduring Hanjiro’s exacting requirements as he shapes them to be graceful, disciplined performers.“Kokuho” then fast-forwards to the early 1970s as we meet the grown-up versions of Kikuo (Ryo Yoshizawa) and Shunsuke (Ryusei Yokohama).

Now practically brothers, the young men are making their name as a well-regarded kabuki duo, but their personalities have begun to diverge.Kikuo remains soft-spoken, while Shunsuke is more of a partier and big talker, dominating their interviews with local journalists.

Hanjiro still thinks highly of them both, although each pupil faces disadvantages.Kikuo is more gifted but in this nepotistic art form, being part of a respected kabuki lineage is crucial, something this yakuza scion doesn’t possess.

Shunsuke, meanwhile, lacks his friend’s formidable technique, but because he’s Hanjiro’s son, his future prospects are p...