Hasami Otoko (The Man Behind the Scissors) Review

A field somewhere in Japan. A schoolgirl rides up on her bicycle and apologizes breathlessly to the silent couple waiting for her there that she is late. They approach, she falls, and when they leave she is lying peacefully on the ground with a pair of scissors planted cruciform in her throat. A serial killer is preying upon school girls in Tokyo, or rather, a pair of killers working in concert. At least that is how the film begins but as The Man Behind the Scissors progresses it shows a remarkable ability to shift and change just when you think you have a handle on it.

In the early going the film appears to be a fairly standard psychological thriller focusing on the killers and their unusual relationship. The woman does the research, finding the victims and laying out the groundwork. The man does the actual killing. As the viewer you are left to ponder the meaning of their rigidly repeated pattern as well as the relationship between the two that has the woman participating in something she is clearly uncomfortable with. But the film quickly takes a turn. After the pair of killers wraps up scouting the home of their next intended victim they stumble across a body in a park. It is their intended schoolgirl and she has been killed by a copycat, their own killings now well publicized. Having been seen with the body they are now forced to stay as witnesses lest they tip their hand. And believing themselves found out – after all, what are the chances of a copycat hitting the very same girl they intended to themselves – they set out on a search for the copycat killer themselves hoping to discover and pin their earlier crimes on him before the police capture and pin his crimes on them. The mystery, and the chase, has now become a three pointed triangle.

Just as you become comfortable with this new format to the film things shift again. The relationship between our initial couple that seemed like such a central mystery is resolved surprisingly early on – if you’re paying attention you should have it sorted by the half hour mark – and the police correctly recognize that there is a copycat and identify who it is a full half hour before the film’s conclusion. And here is where you realize that you have been lulled into a false sense of familiarity, the film’s use of genre convention has led you to believe that it is when thing when it is actually something entirely different, in this case an attempt to humanize the killer’s actions.

The Man Behind the Scissors is a difficult film to evaluate. On the one hand there is no denying that it keeps you on your toes, constantly bending and shifting to take you in new and unexpected directions. On the other hand, rare though they may be the humanized-killer film has been attempted a few times before and they seldom turn out well. At the end of the day do people really want to feel affection, sympathy or recognition towards a serial killer? Generally not. The film also commits the cardinal sin of falling in love with its own ideas and spending too little time on its characters as a result, strong performances in one quarter balanced out by others that are little more than caricature.

That the film succeeds in making you care about it’s central character is a triumph in itself but The Man Behind the Scissors is nonetheless a very uneven effort. An interesting experiment with some solid ideas but not entirely successful.