Movie Reviews: Day Watch, Mr. Brooks, Paprika

WHAT THE SNOW BRINGS The exotic hook in this compelling, if conventional, “How you gonna keep them down on the farm?” family drama is the vanishing culture of draft-horse racing as practiced in the frigid northernmost Japanese island of Hokkaido. Into this provincial milieu of outsize equines, bumptious stable hands and grueling training routines straggles the incongruously well-heeled Manubo, a once-prosperous Internet trader now keeping one step ahead of his creditors. Both a representative modern figure and the biblical archetype of the Prodigal Son, Manubo throws himself on the mercy of his older brother, stable owner Takeo, who has sacrificed personal happiness at the altar of the family business. Such mercy comes with strings attached, as the chastened wastrel is put to work shoveling manure and grooming Unruyu, a Clydesdale champion past his prime and headed for the sashimi factory . . . and yes, the formula begins to smell a bit like Seabiscuit. The saving difference comes in director Kichitaro Negishi’s skill at working a naturalistic setting for its comic — even slapstick — potential, and in cinematographer Hiroshi Machida’s fascination with the stop-and-go spectacle of giant horses struggling through the dirt and over the ever-steepening grades that stand between them and the victory that will buy them one more year of hard conditioning. The racing is more about strength and endurance than about speed — the sparse, cheering crowd at the rail has no trouble keeping ahead of the horses — which makes it a potent symbol for the internal struggles of the film’s essentially, if not immediately, likable characters. (Music Hall) (Ron Stringer)

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