Jubaku: Spellbound
Seen it?1999 | 114 min | Drama
Monday Morning Maybeearly ratingWhy it’s a Monday Morning Maybe
With almost no lasting buzz and soft box office, this one could be a tough watch. Keep your phone handy.
Based on critics, audiences, awards, box office and buzz. Details below.Is it for you?
- Who'll love it
- Aimed squarely at spy-story fans and anyone who likes a story with emotional weight. Nobody is quite who they seem.
- The mood
- Thoughtful and character-driven.
- The pace
- Quiet, then quietly devastating, at 1 hr 54 min.
- What might put you off
- It's in Japanese, so expect subtitles (or a dub).
- Skip it if you need something light and fast tonight.
When a major bank is caught paying off a corporate extortionist, the media and prosecutors begin to dig, breaking open a money-and-favours scandal that threatens to rock the entire structure of business and government to its core. While the bank's top executives continue to vacillate, a quartet of middle-management reformers, led by straight-arrow Kitano (Koji Yakusho), decide to stage a boardroom coup and install a new, clean management team. With the aid of a hotshot news anchor (Mayumi Wakamura) and a hard-nosed prosecutor (Kenichi Endo), heads begin to roll.
How it earned its rating
- CriticsNot counted
Not enough reviews on record yet
- AudiencesNot counted
Not measured yet: not enough ratings
- AwardsNot counted
No major awards or nominations
- Reach & staying powerBelow par
Streaming release that reached a small audience so far; still draws a steady audience long after release
- Buzz & cultural impactWeak
About 1K people sought it out in the past year
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Cast & crew
Directed by Masato Harada
- Koji YakushoHiroshi Kitano
- Tatsuya NakadaiHideaki Sasaki
- Kippei ShiinaAkio Katayama
- Tetsuro TambaTajiro Kawakami
- Jinpachi NezuKohei Nakayama
- Jun FubukiKyoko Kitano
- Renji IshibashiMasao Nakazawa
- Mayumi WakamuraMiho Wada
- Hitomi KurokiHiroko Sato
- Kenichi EndoOnoki