Rena Matsui: "Gift" movie recap and screenshots #1

 Release Date: June 12, 2014    Length: 90 minutes     Director: Taro Miyaoka

Main Cast:

Rena Matsui as Saori Yamane

Kenichi Endo as Zenzo Shinozaki

Hayato Kakizawa as Ichiro Chiba

Takanari Ishii as Takahiro Yamane

 Bit of a small cast as you can see but actually it was Rena and Kenichi's film the whole way, there were very few scenes without one of them in it and at least 3/4 of the scenes had both of them together. This movie just got subbed a little while ago and it was a pleasant surprise that it did as it turned out to be an enjoyable flick and any fans of Rena should definitely see it. Have a short review of it here as it wasn't a real complicated film and anything left out of the review you'll find in the screenshots which I took plenty of and I do mean plenty!

 Rena plays Saori who works as a hostess in a real dive club, far from being an exclusive one. The main reason she's working there as she was the guarantor of a loan taken from her boyfriend who shortly after that skipped town leaving her with a debt of three million yen. There's s shady character around her named Chiba who constantly is checking up on her to make sure she's still working and to collect money from her to dwindle the debt down.
 Endo's character's name is Zenzo, never heard that name before, who is a very successful business man who has worked himself up from poverty when he was growing up to eventually own his own company and becoming quite wealthy. Now in his 50's Zenzo may be very rich as far as finances go but the opposite is true in his personal life as he really has none, he's become a very ruthless man over the years who no person enjoys being around. He was married once but walked out on his wife and daughter close to 30 years before, shortly after he walked out his wife committed suicide and he hasn't seen his daughter in all those years.

 Saori and Zenzo had never met each other coming from two different sides of life but by chance they happen to meet in a park one day, actually it wasn't a true meeting at first as Zenzo saw Saori stealing an old woman's purse from a park bench as she still needs a lot of money to pay off the debt. Zenzo goes to a bench and pretends he's sleeping and leaving his bag as bait to see if Saori will try to nab it. Of course she does and Zenzo suddenly comes out of his fake sleep to capture her and threatens to bring Saori to the police unless she does a strange task for him.
 The strange task which Saori is simply driving him around for the next four days as he wants to go to Tokyo, for that he will pay her one million yen, think all of us would be a bit skeptical if we were in her shoes. However the alternative would be Zenzo bringing her to the police for stealing the woman's purse so she reluctantly agrees to driving him around for the next four days. One thing I'll mention is that I don't know what city it was where they met, it was in the southern part of Japan but it's never mentioned in the film nor do they mention any of the other smaller cities they visit.
 What this journey is for Zenzo is a bit of a nostalgic trip as he stops at various points in his life when he was younger, for instance a house where he lived briefly as a child and at an apartment where he lived when he was a poor man of about twenty. The saying you can't go home again proves true as Zenzo finds no enjoyment in revisiting these places from his past but he still considers it a thing he has to do on his journey. One other note is that Zenzo carries around a bag filled with a huge amount of money, perhaps as much as 50+ million yen and Saori has had a few chances to run off with the bag and she's come so close to doing so but she never could quite do it.

 Mentioned above about the slimy character of Chiba, while Saori came close to stealing Zenzo's bag of money she never did but he's been following Saori and one day when she was alone near their car he suddenly appears. Chiba has attached a tracking device to the car and has been following them, he tries to run off with the bag of money but is somehow thwarted by Saori, he gets slightly injured by her allowing her and Zenzo to escape in the car.
 Though they come from different sides of life Saori and Zenzo start to get along though they don't always show it as they constantly argue, for 2/3 of the movie Saori has no idea what this trio to Tokyo is about. On the third day Zenzo finally comes clean about his past and shows a small ring box to Saori that he wants to bring to Tokyo to give to his daughter. We don't know it at the time but there's nothing in the box as he has no clue what to give to a daughter he hasn't seen in almost 30 years.
 After that Zenzo really fesses up to Saori what the trip to Tokyo is actually about as his purpose for going there is to donate his heart to his sixteen year old granddaughter! Zenzo plans to take a drug that will kill him within ten minutes and the real reason Zenzo hired Saori is that there will be someone there to call the paramedics to rush him to the hospital once he's dead so they can do the heart transplant. Saori is beyond stunned when she hears what his plans are and is confused what to do, be a part of his suicide or to simply walk away from the job?

 Zenzo eventually talks Saori into staying with him to complete his journey, he explained to her though he's quite wealthy his personal life as been the total opposite and he needs to do the heart transplant to sort of make up for all the bad things he's done over the years. Saori still has mixed feelings about it but can sort of understand where Zenzo is coming from as her past has also been quite difficult with a lot of regrets. One major incident which happened is that when Saori was a teen she stabbed her mother who she felt had deserved it for quite a long time. Her mother recovered but Saori was sent to a juvenile hall and while she was in there her mother died in a car accident, Saori still regrets it wasn't her that killed her mother.
 This is starting to get a bit long so will try to wrap it up quickly. Saori and Zenzo finally finish their journey and arrive in Tokyo where the first thing they do is go to the hospital where his granddaughter is staying. Zenzo had never seen her before but wasn't able to talk with her as she was in a coma still waiting for the heart transplant, he also didn't get the opportunity to meet his daughter who he hadn't seen for nearly thirty years. At first it appeared as though Zenzo wasn't going to go through with donating his heart and committing suicide, he though to himself 'why should I' as he came to the conclusion hsi daughter and granddaughter really meant nothing to him, for the most part they were just strangers to him.

 Those thoughts about not donating his heart were fleeting though as he does finally decide to do it, him and Saori eventually go to an old warehouse where he is going to take a drug which is supposed to kill him within ten minutes. After that Saori is going to call up the paramedics and the plan is for them to rush Zenzo to the hospital where they can do the heart transplant operation. Before they can put the plan into motion out of nowhere appears Chiba who had installed a second tracking device on their car, he was going to steal all of Zenzo's money and perhaps his drug too which would leave him no way to kill himself. Saori though came to the rescue as she had grown a bit find of Zenzo and was also fed up with the evil ways of Chiba. Saori attacked Chiba with a long board and really did a number on him, he did escape but the police ended up nabbing him. Don't know if you can call it a 'happy ending' as Zenzo did take the drug which ended up killing him, the happy part though was they were able to get the heart to the hospital on time and his granddaughter was saved, a year later she was still leading a healthy life.

 Hadn't read any reviews on this film so went in not knowing if it would be good or not, in my opinion it was a fairly good movie which I'll probably watch again. Endo is always good in whatever he appears in and in this film he was that way too. Rena did a solid job too, no award winning performance but she did quite well and wouldn't mind seeing her in another movie or drama like this. Will give this film a 9/10, really recommend it as it was interesting all the way through and never really had any scenes which dragged, pace of the movie was quite good.
 Took a bigger amount of screenshots than normal and though there's many in this post have fifty more pics of Rena from the movie in the next post. Didn't really leave many things out in this review but perhaps the screenshots will help you follow the film a bit better, if you get the chance to view this movie than would highly suggest that you do.