Takeshi: the star, naturally. His character is named Kenji.
Mira Sorvino: has a supporting role and there are several characters with small roles.
There's one young, beautiful Asian woman and her character's name is "Anouk". Turns out she's a famous Korean actress. Wonsuk says she's like the Julia Roberts of South Korea.
Ben Gazzara: his character is "John Sage", the 60-something, famous, wealthy painter living in a Soho loft/studio. Reminds me of the painter Jasper Johns: I say this only because he looks like Johns, about the same age, and he unveils a Big Red Dot painting that made me think of the target paintings. But in one way he's definitely not Johns--he has a girlfriend (Anouk).
Jeffrey Wright: he has a small but funny part as a guy who hangs around Le Gamin café all afternoon drinking espresso, pretending to read Balzac's Lost Illusions.

The movie seems to be all about the subjective appearances of different people or things. One person's perception of another person or thing can be different from another person's perception of the same thing. Even Jeffrey Wright's choice of the novel that he's reading— Balzac's Lost Illusions— refers to the act of putting on appearances or the act of trying to make a certain kind of visual impression, or to create an illusion.
At the John Sage character's loft/studio, Sage's painting of a giant red dot on a white background is two different things to two different people. To Kenji it's "our flag" (the Japanese flag). To John Sage it's an original painting, his painting. It reminds him of the time that he spent in Okinawa back in 1953. He wouldn't technically call it the Japanese flag.

During the question-and-answer period after the movie, Wonsuk Chin said that he had a brush with death a few years ago. He had "an accident" in his apartment (hmm, wonder what happened) and he was lying on the floor bleeding and he said it was actually not so awful: you sort of relax and accept it that the life is flowing out of you. The endorphin rush must have kicked in. This perception of accepting death, of death being comforting, is something that he wanted to include in the movie. And it is there: at the end Kenji is lying on the mattress bleeding with his head on Mira's lap, asking if it's time to die yet.

There are a few doubles in the movie: the kooky waitress who works at Le Gamin in the afternoon and her identical twin sister who works there in the evening. Mira Sorvino's character and the "Pola" character seem to be doubles. There's the fake fortune teller and the real one. There's the female prostitute and the male, drag-queen prostitute.
Kenji encounters Anouk, the beautiful Asian woman, at the Sage exhibit in the afternoon and then sees her later at Le Gamin and then later at Sage's loft, but Anouk claims that she doesn't remember Kenji from earlier in the day. This is the same thing that the second waitress said to him in the evening at Le Gamin. Kenji said, "How can you not remember me? Pola fainted and I picked her up!" Then the waitress reveals that she is the twin sister of the waitress who worked there in the afternoon. Well, later, at Sage's loft, Anouk says she doesn't remember Kenji grabbing her and kissing her earlier that day. It's a duplication of the experience that he had with the waitresses, but I think in this case that Anouk is lying to him, that she doesn't have a twin sister. Kenji is frustrated by her lie, because it renders him invisible, she refuses to acknowledge that he exists in her memory. He's leaving no imprint.

The movie starts out with some footage shot and presented in the style of an old-time silent movie, with black-and-white film. This silent film is set in Baghdad and Mira Sorvino, symbolizing "Death," is pursuing a terrified Arab man who knows that she is Death and that she has come to claim him. He runs away. Suddenly the silent film is on the beach (Wonsuk filmed it in Sandy Hook, New Jersey, and set up the camera angle so that you couldn't see the Manhattan skyline in the distance), and Mira's two sidekick partners inform her that the Arab guy got away. Mira scowls and looks up— freeze frame. It turns out that this is Kenji's dream. Day 1: Suddenly we're in a very clean white room and the phone's ringing. Kenji wakes up and reaches out from under the puffy white duvet to answer it. It's his mom calling from Tokyo. He lies and tells his mom that he wasn't asleep, he was in the bathroom. He doesn't want her to know that he sleeps until noon. Takeshi wearing tee shirt and shorts--looks magnificent. He asks Mom to send more money, he'll get a job next month. He obviously hasn't been living in New York very long. In his apartment almost everything is pure, bright white (the bed, the linens, the walls, the blinds, the clock, the refrigerator and cabinets, the ishes), like some transitional environment ready to send him into the afterlife. And there's not much furniture. The whole place looks rather temporary, has no sign of individuality. It's almost as if his life is as blank as the apartment. His life only gets interesting when Mira is closing in on him.

So he's not working, he sleeps late, reads a lot, hangs out at Le Gamin cafe. His mom is calling to say that a family friend is arriving at JFK airport tomorrow and can this young man stay with Kenji for a while? Kenji writes it down in his datebook. Gets up, staggers around, drinks the last of the milk out of the carton, goes back to bed for an hour. Finally gets up at 12:30, gets dressed and goes down to Le Gamin. It's a beautiful, brilliantly sunny day. On the way to Le Gamin, on one of those brick-paved streets that you find in Soho, the Arab guy from his dream goes tearing past him and knocks him down. One of Mira Sorvino's partners follows the Arab guy, only now he's on roller blades. Kenji gets up, dusts himself off and goes to the cafe. Of course there's an inept, snooty, dramatic-looking, rail-thin waitress. She brings him espresso, but after one taste he can tell that it's de-caffeinated and he wanted regular, with a full blast of caffeine. Jeffrey Wright is sitting in the corner pretending to read Lost Illusions. A beautiful, tall blond woman appears in the doorway, gazes at Kenji, and then faints. He runs over and picks her up and says, "Are you ok?" She sits down at his table, orders an espresso and starts talking to him. Turns out she's German and her name is Pola. Suddenly, while they're drinking their spresso, Kenji sees the terrified Arab man running past the cafe. Without a word he gets up from the table and runs out of the café, chases after the Arab man and finally catches up to him. I think in every Takeshi movie there has to be a scene in which he is running as fast as he can, and here it is! He knocks the Arab man over and says "who are you? You were in my dream!" Suddenly Mira appears beside him and thanks Takeshi for catching the guy for her. She and the Arab disappear and Takeshi notices a small magic stone on the pavement and picks it up, or rather, it flies up off the pavement on its own and lands in his palm. It's a lucky stone, to protect him from death. Kenji walks back to Le Gamin. Outside on the sidewalk he runs into Pola, the beautiful German woman. He asks her to have dinner with him that night. She says she's not sure, she has to fly to Paris the next day and she is probably busy tonight. He tells her he will be at the cafe at 6:00 and he hopes she will change her mind and be there at 6:00. She says maybe.

Kenji goes back into Le Gamin. His friend Fabrizio is waiting for him and Kenji tells him about meeting Pola. Jeffrey Wright starts eavesdropping on their conversation and says, "man, you don't have a way with woman, you sit down at a table with her and then run off without a word and leave her to pay for your espresso!" But appearances can be deceiving: Kenji surprises him by telling him that he has a date with Pola that night. Fabrizio is looking at a long strip of film. At first we think it's his own film because Jeffrey Wright asks him if he's a filmmaker and he says "yes." But it turns out that he's not looking at his own film, he's looking at an old James Bond film, checking out Ursula Andress. He hasn't made a film yet; he's a wannabe filmmaker. His idea is to make a documentary called "whatever happened to Ursula Andress?" "She could be living in the South of France with some young gigolo, or she could be living in Tibet, or something." Then they discuss the book that Jeffrey Wright is reading, Lost Illusions. Fabrizio asks, "what is this book about?" JW answers that it's about a young man who comes to Paris to try to get into high society. "Is it a good book?" Fabrizio asks. "How should I know? I'm still reading it," replies JW. "Oh yes," Kenji says, "you won't know until you are finished." "Yeah," JW replies. "It's like life. You won't know what your life means until it's over."

Kenji walks home. On the way he sees a beautiful Korean woman coming out of a gallery exhibiting paintings by John Sage. He can't help staring at her, too shy to say anything. She stares back and then walks past him and he watches her walking away. He is too intimidated to talk to a beautiful woman like that. He goes home, reads a Japanese paperback, falls asleep, wakes up suddenly and dashes down to Le Gamin late, afraid that he has missed Pola. He asks the waitress if Pola has returned. She doesn't remember Pola or him and he's bewildered— how could she forget them when they were only there a few hours ago and Pola fainted on the floor? Then the waitress says, "oh, that must have been my twin sister who saw you! She was working here this afternoon!" Just when Kenji thinks that he's missed Pola and he's walking away from the cafe, Pola hops out of a cab and catches up to him. They walk down the sidewalk together. Suddenly we see Mira and her two partners in the death business standing on a fire escape looking down on the pair. Nobody can see them. More dialogue about how subjective appearances can be: the female partner says, "oh, there he is again. He has a nice-looking girlfriend." But Mira interprets it differently. "Are you kidding? She's not his girlfriend. This is probably their first date. You can tell by the way they're relating to each other. Look at their body language, there's a certain tension. Each one of them wants something from the other."

Kenji and Pola go off to dinner. Amusing cigarette-smoking moment: when Pola and Kenji are in the restaurant, Pola takes out a cigarette and lights it and offers one to Kenji. He declines, saying "it's not healthy." This comment, of course, elicited guffaws from the audience, many of whom no doubt have seen Takeshi puffing away like a chimney in Hong Kong movies like "Fallen Angels" and "The Odd One Dies." Finally, worried that Pola will think he's not cool, he accepts a cigarette, lights it, takes a puff, and promptly begins coughing and choking.

Later Pola invites him up to her loft apartment and there's a man sleeping in the large bed at one end of the room. This is a bit disturbing to Kenji, but Pola says, "oh, don't worry, he won't wake up." (Wha? Either he's dead or he's comatose.) Anyway, while Kenji is sitting at the kitchen table sipping his wine, Pola is off in the corner getting undressed very casually. This is also rather disconcerting to Kenji, who wonders what he should do next. He decides to turn away and not look at her, and keeps talking nervously. She slips on a black dress and then comes over, sits on his lap, and they start kissing. Suddenly she gets up and says he has to leave and naturally he's all confused, wonders what he did wrong. She asks for his address and gives him her address in Paris and asks him to write to her. Then Kenji gives her his lucky stone. "If I need it back you can always Fed Ex it to me." He goes home and hurls himself on his bed and falls asleep.

That night he has another dream. This one is another highly stylized, black and white scenario, only it's a modern black and white film. It almost looks like theater, as if we are looking at a stage. The scene is the interior of a traditional Japanese house with very little furniture, just mats on the floor, and sliding doors separating the rooms. Mira Sorvino enters the house wearing a traditional kimono and headdress. She speaks Japanese to Kenji. He knows that she is Death, come to claim him, and he's afraid so he calls out for his mother. A panel slides open and his mother appears wearing a traditional kimono, looking very calm. She welcomes Mira and calmly converses with her in Japanese, tries to give Mira a gift. At one point Pola enters the room wearing a kimono too, and she recites a two-line poem in German about accepting death, then leaves the room. Kenji's mom insists that Mira take the gift but Mira won't accept it and tries to give it back. Then the mom tries to push the gift over to Mira again and Mira won't accept it and pushes it back. They keep doing this, both being ultra-polite and looking increasingly silly. Meanwhile Kenji is sitting in the corner looking away, bewildered. Finally, exasperated, he interrupts and says "Mom, don't you see what is happening? I will never see you again! She is here to take me away!" His mom seems quite unperturbed by this news, as if she has completely accepted it.

Day 2: suddenly Kenji wakes up. It's around 9:00 a.m. Mira is sitting at the foot of the bed. She tells him he has only 12 hours left to live. "Well, why don't you just kill me now?" he asks. "I'm doing you a favor because you did me a favor catching that man for me in the street yesterday. This way I'm letting you know that you have 12 precious hours left, so you had better make the most of them." This is the point where I expected the movie to descend into silliness. I expected Kenji to run around frantically doing all the things he has wanted to do in New York but hasn't done yet: go to the top of the Empire State Building, go to the Statue of Liberty, go bowling, go eat in a really expensive restaurant, go rollerblading, take a boat around New York harbor. But this movie is actually more sophisticated than that. Kenji puts on a great outfit— dark trousers, lime-green shirt with pale diagonal-striped tie, and white cotton double-vent Prada-knock-off jacket. Then he calls his mom, just to talk to her. He believes that this is the last time he will talk to her, but he doesn't tell her that. He tells her not to bother sending the money because he won't need it after all. He lies and tells her that he got a job. Then he says good-bye and he waits for her to hang up first. Kenji goes out to JFK airport. At first I thought he was going to pick up the family friend who is arriving from Tokyo, but he's really going out there to find Pola before she gets on her plane. He can't find her, but he asks about flights to Paris at the AirFrance ticket counter. The AirFrance ticket counter is strangely deserted except for this one rather air-headed, smiling young male ticket agent. He tells Kenji that there's a flight to Paris at 6:00, 7:00, etc. and if he wants to take the Concorde, it's at 1:30. Later on in the story he explains that he was thinking of taking a plane to Paris because he'd rather die in Paris, but he won't land in Paris until after 9:00 Paris time, even if he takes the super-fast Concorde, and, besides, he doesn't have enough money for a flight and he doesn't have his passport with him. If he got on the plane he might die on the plane and who wants to die on a plane? Or at Orly airport, for that matter?

There's a funny vignette when he leaves the airport. He goes out to get a taxi and this little girl barges up to him and says, "we'll share a taxi!" So they ride all the way back into the city together. The little girl chatters on and on. "Oh, are you an actor? You look familiar. Were you in 'The Lover'?" [she's mixing him up with Tony Leung Kar-fai--could be Wonsuk's comment on the American stereotype about all Asians looking alike]. Kenji asks her, "aren't you a little bit young for that movie?" "Oh no, on the contrary," she replies. "I've figured sex and men and women out and I'm glad that I've figured it out at such a young age because I'll be all ready when I'm sexually mature. You know, men don't care about love at all. All they care about is sex. No matter what people say, sex is all that matters and I'm glad that I know this now so I won't waste any time later." Kenji stays on his side of the back seat, looking at the little girl with a mixture of curiosity and fear.

Oh yeah, there's a John Woo scene. Mira shows up at another guy's apartment, to claim another soul. This guy is Chinese, I think he's from the mainland because he speaks Mandarin and Mira speaks to him. She's wearing a cheongsam with delicate little blossoms in her hair. She tells him it's time for him to die. He doesn't believe her and he goes on playing mah jong with his buddy. But just then we see a hitman stomping up the stairs. He bursts in, wearing sunglasses and dressed up in a black suit and tie, and blows away both men in blood-spurting slo-mo. The hitman is Wonsuk! Is he supposed to be Chow Yun-fat, Tony Leung Chiu-wai? Or is it "Fallen Angels," and he's Leon Lai? Hard to say.

So anyway, now Kenji has got about 10 hours left to live, what's he going to do? Well, what do most young men think about all the time? Sex. He goes over to Times Square and goes into a peep show and watches a topless woman dancing. This isn't really all that gratifying. So he goes over to the meat-packing district and tries to hook up with a prostitute. Actually he just wants to talk, and he offers to pay her if she'll just let him talk to her. She says, "don't waste my time," and walks away. Then he sees another woman in the distance, obviously a prostitute, wearing a black dress. He thinks it's a woman until she opens her mouth and calls to him and we realize it's a man dressed up in drag. More of that "appearances can be deceiving" vibe. Kenji goes over and talks to him. It's really quite funny. Kenji says, "how are you doing," and the male prostitute begins this amusing monologue at top speed: "well, my boyfriend broke up with me two weeks ago, and the landlord kicked me out a few days ago, and two days ago I got raped by my boyfriend's best friend, and I miss my boyfriend, etc." I forget how the rest of the conversation goes. Then he stops at a fortune teller's table on the street. She reads his palm and tells him he'll live for 50 years and he'll have three children. Since he believes that he'll die that evening he decides that she's a liar and a fake and he gets angry with her and demands his money back. Then he stops at the table of another fortune teller. She reads his palm and looks at him, horrified. He says, "I am going to die, aren't I? How am I going to die?" She won't answer, just packs up all her things and runs away from him. After the experience with the two fortune tellers he's all shook up and he goes to see Fabrizio. It turns out that Fabrizio has a job selling tickets at a rather seedy movie theater (looks like the Cinema Village on 12th street to me). Kenji asks Fabrizio to meet him at the cafe when he can get a break. Kenji waits for him at Le Gamin. Fabrizio arrives and Kenji gives him a letter that he has written to Pola. He asks Fabrizio to put it in an envelope and put a stamp on the envelope and mail it for him. Then he embraces Fabrizio and says "I'm glad I met you." He believes that because he will die at 9:00 that evening he will never see Fabrizio again. He sits down at the table again and a few seconds later hears tires squealing and a crash. He runs out and sees Fabrizio lying in the street: he was killed instantly by a car.

Kenji walks home, stunned. He sees the same beautiful Korean woman. Now here's something that Kenji always wanted to do: he follows her as she enters the art gallery where the John Sage exhibit is showing. He walks right up to her, pushes her against the wall and kisses her. She doesn't say a word to him, just walks away. He goes back to Le Gamin and sits down to have an espresso. Jeffrey Wright is sitting in his usual corner pretending to read Lost Illusions. Jeffrey starts talking with Kenji and admits that he hasn't read even page 1 of Lost Illusions, he just carries it around with him and people think he's reading it. Then, after a while, if people ask him what he thinks of Lost Illusions he'll say either "well, I liked it," or "well, I didn't like it." All he needs to do is give the appearance of having read the book, and people will accept it. Kenji is surprised to see the Korean girl arrive at Le Gamin. She ignores Kenji and goes over to a table against the opposite wall and sits down with a much older man who appears to be in his '60s. He also appears to be her boyfriend. Jeffrey and Kenji sit there and Kenji says, "why does she hang around with a man like that?" You get the feeling that he's thinking "It's not fair! He's so old and what does she see in him?" Jeffrey says, "well, maybe he's good in bed." I didn't realize until they showed him in close-up that it's Ben Gazzara. God, I haven't seen Ben Gazzara in years. He looks like Jasper Johns. His name is John Sage. The last name "Sage" is there for a reason: he's an artist; aren't artists supposed to be the ones with great insight about the world, the truth-tellers in each culture? Kenji sees him as a wise old man: later he asks John to tell him anything that he should know before he dies. The sad truth is that John Sage doesn't have any words of wisdom for Kenji before he dies. The Korean girl gets up to go to the bathroom and Kenji decides, "what the hell, I only have about 6 hours left to live, why should I worry about being tactful?" He walks up to John Sage's table and looks down at him and says, "what are you doing with a girl like that? She is too young for you. She should be dating some man her own age." Of course John Sage merely finds this amusing and is not offended. Kenji sits down and tells him his story about how he only has 6 hours left to live. John Sage listens to his story but doesn't really believe him. The Korean girl returns to the table and John introduces her as "Anouk." She doesn't seem the least bit interested in him but he's a bit nervous because he is sure that she remembers that he had just grabbed her and kissed her in the art gallery. She doesn't say a thing. John Sage invites Kenji to his dinner party which will take place that evening. He shows up at their dreadfully hip-looking loft around 6:00. Another guest arrives. It's Mira (!) but now she's dressed up as a man in a suit and a hat. Kenji recognizes her and isn't really all that surprised to see her. Mira takes a picture of Kenji with a Polaroid instant camera. She says, "I think I'll take a bunch of pictures of him and call it 'Portrait of a young man with only 3 hours to live.'" (Could this be Wonsuk poking fun at the superficiality of trendy conceptual art?)

Anyway, this movie is fairly well-constructed because you can sense that everything will come to a climax at John Sage's dinner party. And it does, and it's surprising, not only for the turn of events but also for seeing Kenji get genuinely angry and out of control. The dinner party starts out pretty civilized and peaceful, although Kenji is frustrated and incredulous when Anouk tells him that she does not remember him pushing her against the wall and kissing her at the art gallery earlier that day. Mira leaves the loft to go get some film so that she can take more pictures of Kenji. While she is gone Kenji is alone with Anouk and Sage. Kenji decides to drop all tactfulness--after all, he only has 2 hours to live at this point--and he simply asks John Sage for permission to have sex with Anouk. Sage is stunned by this request, but Kenji repeats it. Sage is offended and says, "well, you can't ask me for permission. I don't own her, after all." Anouk says nothing during all this conversation. Kenji replies, "don't you own her? You say that you don't but you probably think that you do." Kenji tells him that he is an old man and what does he really know about Anouk anyway. Anouk might be having sex with a lot of guys behind his back and he wouldn't even know it. Sage angrily stomps over to the door and opens it and asks Kenji to leave. At this point Kenji gets angry too and demands to know why Sage invited him to the dinner party anyway? "What do you want from me?" he asks Sage. And he accuses Anouk of lying to him when she says that she doesn't remember him from earlier that afternoon.